Software RAID and Logical Volume in Linux versus FreeBSD

[Matt Proud]

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?

Cheers,

Matt