Vinum in FreeBSD 4.x branch

[Bill Moran]

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, I thought I'd chime in with mine:

I've been using Vinum in production environments for about 4 years now.
I have seen the panics during configuration that you describe.  But it's
not a big deal (to me) as the machine is not yet in production during
vinum configuration.  Also, I haven't seen a Vinum panic in 3 years.

For actual production use ... the system works great.  Performance is
excellent, failover is perfect and recovery works well.  Never had
problems with a production Vinum system once it's up and running.

I will concur that it takes a bit of work to understand configuration
of Vinum, and one should be well versed in it before attempting to
reconfigure an existing system.  Hopefully, someone will find the
time to make the user interface more user-friendly (perhaps a port ...
I know, now that I've brought it up I've volunteered as well ...)

Duncan Young wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Though I run vinum at home, I would actually suggest not using it in a
> corperate environment.  There are a couple of problems with it which make
> it less than desirable.
> 
> 1) No root disk support (well I last time I checked it didn't).  This is
> main reason not to use vinum.
> 
> 2) Configuration screw ups can cause panics etc.  I've also had other
> panics, but alas at the time I had more real memory than swap poartition
> so no crash dump.  I actually can't quite remember what trigered it, but I
> think it was to do with the automounter unmounting volumes.  Anyway, I
> don't consider it to be competly stable, especially since configuration is
> not idiot proof (i.e. the state of disks can get screwed up).  By way of
> comparison, I've used veritas volume manager, solstice Disk suit, carrion
> disk arrays, lvm (linux and HPUX), etc.  All of these are much more idiot
> proof.  I'm sure vinum will get there, but its not quite there yet.
> 
> 
> For simplicity and peace of mind, I would sugest some sort of hardware
> raid controler and mirror everything.
> 
> Duncan
> 
> 
>>Hello fellow BSDers!
>>
>>I am about to install a new server on a corportate environment
>>where failure is not an option (that's why I am installing
>>FreeBSD :-) ). To minimize hard disk problems I intend to use
>>Vinum.
>>
>>I just want to know how is the stability and robustness of
>>Vinum in the 4.x branch.
>>
>>Best regards,
>>Miguel Gonçalves
>>
>>PS: I know this is not a good thing to do but can you please
>>CC to me as I am not on the list due to limitations of my
>>mail server. Thanks again!
>>
>>
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>>
>>
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com