GEOM, Vinum difference

Rakhesh Sasidharan rakhesh at rakhesh.com
Tue Aug 21 21:52:58 PDT 2007


Lowell Gilbert wrote:

> 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).

Missed that one! :) There's no geom utility for RAID5, so that's 
definitely a difference. Thanks!

Another (related) question: both gvinum and the geom utilities like 
gmirror and gstripe etc provide for RAID0, RAID1, and RAID3. Any 
advantages/ disadvantages of using one instead of the other?

Thanks,

 				- Rakhesh
                                 http://rakhesh.com/


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