GEOM, Vinum difference

[Lowell Gilbert]

Rakhesh Sasidharan <rakhesh at rakhesh.com> writes:

> I see that if I want to do disk striping/ concating/ mirroring,
> FreeBSD offers the GEOM utilities and the Vinum LVM (which fits into
> the GEOM architecture). Why do we have two different ways of doing the
> same tasks -- any advantages/ disadvantages to either approach?
>
> I did check the archives before posting this question. Got a couple of
> hits, but they seem to be old info. Hence this question.
>
> The GEOM utilities seem to be newer, fancier, and probably the
> future. Vinum seems to be how things used to happen earlier. After
> GEOM was introduced, if Vinum had been discarded, I would have
> understood. But it wasn't. Instead, it was rewritten for GEOM and is
> probably still actively maintained. So I wonder why we have two ways
> of doing the same tasks ...
>
> What I understand from the archives is that Vinum was _probably_
> rewritten for GEOM coz the GEOM utilities were still new and not as
> time tested as Vinum. Is that the case? So will Vinum continue to be
> around for a while or it be discarded?

geom(4) does not provide RAID.  It provides framework services that
are used by gvinum(8), (and by many other disk-related capabilities).