Re: Filesystem recommendations
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 01:56:21PM +0200, Javier Barroso wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
> > Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:22 AM:
> >> On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> >>> Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:
> >>
> >> Sorry Stan, Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode. It's a
> >> reflex. I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.
> >>
> >> I think you are confusing what is with what should be.
> >
> > A'ight, you forced me to pull out the big gun. Choke on it. The master
> > penguin himself, kernel.org, has run on XFS since 2008. Sorry for the body
> > slam. Is your back ok Mark? ;) Pretty sure I just "won" this discussion.
> > Err, actually, XFS wins. ;) BTW, the main Debian mirror in the U.S. is
> > actually housed in kernel.org last I checked. Thus, the files on your
> > system were very likely originally served from XFS.
> >
> > The Linux Kernel Archives
> >
> > "A bit more than a year ago (as of October 2008) kernel.org, in an ever
> > increasing need to squeeze more performance out of it's machines, made the
> > leap of migrating the primary mirror machines (mirrors.kernel.org) to XFS.
> > We site a number of reasons including fscking 5.5T of disk is long and
> > painful, we were hitting various cache issues, and we were seeking better
> > performance out of our file system."
> >
> > "After initial tests looked positive we made the jump, and have been quite
> > happy with the results. With an instant increase in performance and
> > throughput, as well as the worst xfs_check we've ever seen taking 10
> > minutes, we were quite happy. Subsequently we've moved all primary mirroring
> > file-systems to XFS, including www.kernel.org , and mirrors.kernel.org. With
> > an average constant movement of about 400mbps around the world, and with
> > peaks into the 3.1gbps range serving thousands of users simultaneously it's
> > been a file system that has taken the brunt we can throw at it and held up
> > spectacularly."
> >
> > http://www.xfs.org/index.php/XFS_Companies#The_Linux_Kernel_Archives
> Hello Stan,
>
> Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
> it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
> defaults if it is possible
>
I've read articles which state that ext3 has superior resilience to
sudden power loss. That sentiment has been echoed in this thread, by
Stan I think, with statements like (paraphrasing): XFS is good for
production servers which have uninterruptible power supplies.
The resilience is due to the way the journal is written, if I
understand correctly. Maybe somebody on this list who understands it
better can confirm or deny. There is a journal_data_writeback option
for ext3 which will speed up writes to the filesystem, but reduce its
resilience to power loss. With this option enabled, I recall reading
that the ext3 benchmarks are pretty similar to XFS.
I'm not an expert, so don't take my word for it. Do some research on it
yourself, or wait for the real experts to chime in and correct me :)
-Rob
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