Software RAID and Logical Volume in Linux versus FreeBSD

[Ivan Voras]

Matt Proud wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have used FreeBSD for a long time very casually but have never explored
> any of its software RAID or volume management features---at least to a
> degree to which I feel comfortable with them. What I would like to know with
> this post is 1.) whether there exists the ability to setup an analogue of
> this in FreeBSD; 2.) how this would be done if it is possible; 3.) whether
> the capabilities of this in FreeBSD are sufficiently mature to manage it;
> and 4.) how worst-case recovery scenarios would go on FreeBSD.
> 
> I have a four disk software RAID setup in Linux. Everything is in RAID with
> the exception of swap. Here's an approximation of my setup:
> 
> /dev/sd{a,b,c}1 is in a RAID 1 array used as /boot.
> /dev/sd{a,b,c}2 is in a RAID 1 array used a /root.
> /dev/sd{a,b,c}3 is used as swap with each of equal priority.
> /dev/sd{a,b,c}4 is in a RAID 5 array used as LVM.
> 
> /dev/sdd houses spare partitions for the compliment supra.
> 
> LVM is henceforth broke up according to proper Linux-FHS rules.
> 
> What are your thoughts on this?

It's definitely doable, see gmirror(8) for RAID1, gvinum(8) for RAID5.
Note that there's no separate entity that performs as "LVM" does - this
functionality is integrated in the system behaviour. You can use any
disk device or partition with any transformation (such as RAID,
encryption, iSCSI, etc.) without special preparation, partitioning or
labeling.


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