On Sat, Jun 02, 2012 at 10:59:13AM -0400, Boris Epstein wrote:
A process implemented in the userland may not be as efficient as one implemented as part of the kernel - but that doesn't mean it can't scale well, does it?
Depends on ones definition of scale I suppose. I consider efficiency and performance one factor of scaling. To be completely honest about this I must admit that I've not spent a lot of time benchmarking any user space implementation in a large deployment but I wouldn't expect performance to ramp up based on scale.
I've always had a strong aversion to file systems implemented in user space versus kernel space as I've (personally) never found such an implementation that had what I considered good performance.
My needs, however, are not yours. If your requirements give you leeway for higher latency and slower overall performance perhaps a userland file system will work perfectly fine for you. As with all else in the IT sector use what works best for you :)
John