Now that I've been enlightened to the terrible write performance of ext3 on my new 3Ware RAID 5 array, I'm stuck choosing an alternative filesystem. I benchmarked XFS, JFS, ReiserFS and ext3 and they came back in that order from best to worst performer. I'm leaning towards XFS because of performance and because centosplus makes kernel modules available for the stock kernel. How's the reliability of XFS? It's certainly been around long enough. Anyone care to sway me one way or another? Kirk Bocek
For our mysql servers we use reiserfs, which we install via a kernel rpm. We then install reiserfs-tools rpm, and do some work on /etc/fstab and some mount commands to get it all functioning. We do this for performance and redundancy. The daemons you run will likely have a say in which filesystem you plan to deploy, good idea to post to those lists as well. e.g. "Squid performs horrible on RAID5, and it doesn't use SMP, it likes ext3 just fine because of how it works". Names some daemons, you'll probably get alot of opinions from people fairly close to their respective code-bases, or their shadowy minions ; ) -karlski> Now that I've been enlightened to the terrible write performance of ext3 > on my > new 3Ware RAID 5 array, I'm stuck choosing an alternative filesystem. I > benchmarked XFS, JFS, ReiserFS and ext3 and they came back in that order > from > best to worst performer. > > I'm leaning towards XFS because of performance and because centosplus > makes > kernel modules available for the stock kernel. > > How's the reliability of XFS? It's certainly been around long enough. > > Anyone care to sway me one way or another? > > Kirk Bocek > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >
On Mon, 2 Oct 2006 at 4:41pm, Kirk Bocek wrote> Now that I've been enlightened to the terrible write performance of ext3 on > my new 3Ware RAID 5 array, I'm stuck choosing an alternative filesystem. I > benchmarked XFS, JFS, ReiserFS and ext3 and they came back in that order from > best to worst performer. > > I'm leaning towards XFS because of performance and because centosplus makes > kernel modules available for the stock kernel. > > How's the reliability of XFS? It's certainly been around long enough. > > Anyone care to sway me one way or another?To a large extent it depends on what the FS will be doing. Each have their strengths. That being said, I'd lean strongly towards XFS or JFS. Reiser... worries me. AIUI, the current incarnation has been largely abandoned for Reiser4, which is having all sorts of issues getting into the kernel. I've used XFS for years and had very good luck with it. And some folks I respect very much here are using JFS on critical systems. Test 'em both under your presumed workload and go with whatever gives you the warm fuzzies. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Kirk Bocek wrote:> Now that I've been enlightened to the terrible write performance of > ext3 on my new 3Ware RAID 5 array, I'm stuck choosing an alternative > filesystem. I benchmarked XFS, JFS, ReiserFS and ext3 and they came > back in that order from best to worst performer. > > I'm leaning towards XFS because of performance and because centosplus > makes kernel modules available for the stock kernel. > > How's the reliability of XFS? It's certainly been around long enough. > > Anyone care to sway me one way or another? >Here is the story, if not somewhat outdated, that I have learned over time. XFS, fast, but can fail under load, does XORs of data, so a bad write, as in power failure, can mean garbage in a file. It is meta-data only journaling. Also slow on deletes. JFS, reasonable fast, not popular, read of lots of bugs last time I looked into it a few years ago, again meta-data only journaling. ReiserFS v3, very buggy, meta-data only, and not well maintained at this point. Bad writes can lead to zeros in your files. ReiserFS v4, sounds great, may be everything I want in a filesystem, but isn't in the kernel yet. Can do data journaling in addition to meta-data only. ext3, works for me. It is meta-data only by default, but does it in s a such a way to minimize the risk much more than other filesystems. Also has writeback mode which is like other filesystems if you are looking for better performance. Also has full data journalling mode, which is atomic and is actually faster than the other two in certain situations.
On Tuesday 03 October 2006 05:02, Feizhou wrote:> Suse is behind reiser v3.Not any more. See http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/suse-102-ditching-reiserfs-as-it-default-fs/ for details. SuSE is going to ext3 as its default filesystem with 10.2, looks like. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu
Kirk - On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 04:41:38PM -0700, Kirk Bocek wrote:> Now that I've been enlightened to the terrible write performance of ext3 on > my new 3Ware RAID 5 array, I'm stuck choosing an alternative filesystem. ...There is a known problem with some 3Ware RAID cards and RH-type Linux OSes (I can find the link, if you like). We ran into that but discovered that an upgrade to our RAID card (to the 9000 series) fixed it for us (but I've seen reports of problems even with the 9000 series cards). A while back we tried both XFS & JFS, but ran into kernel bugs with both of them. It may be that those bugs have been fixed, but it's worthwhile knowing about it ahead of time. I've not been following ReiserFS for a long time, but the last time I worked with it (several years ago) we ran into problems with file corruption. It may be that they have all been fixed, but I'd look into that as well. Good luck, Debbie "who hasn't read the entire thread" -- | Debbie Tropiano | debbiet at arlut.utexas.edu | | Environmental Sciences Laboratory | +1 512 835 3367 w | | Applied Research Laboratories of UT Austin | +1 512 835 3544 fax | | P.O. Box 8029, Austin, TX 78713-8029 | home email: debbie at icus.com |
Kirk Bocek wrote:> Peter Kjellstr?m wrote: > > I use XFS on Centos-4 here with 9500-S and 9550-SX. The load is > > quite heavy (~30 climate modelling people) and the volume not tiny > > (~40 TiB). This system works fine and I have no problems sleeping > > at night. But then again, if you want data security you'll have to > > run backups anyway. Any filesystem can die. > > Oh, yea, backups! :) > > Heck, 30 users and 40 tibibytes of data is a pretty good stress test. > How long have you been running XFS in this setup?And how do you backup that much data? -- Bowie