On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Miguel Medalha miguelmedalha@sapo.pt wrote:
I am about to install a new server running CentOS 5.4. The server will contain pretty critical data that we can't afford to corrupt.
I would like to benefit from the extra speed and features of a ext4 filesystem but I don't have any experience with it. Is there some member of the list who can enlighten me on whether ext4 is mature enough to be used on a production server without too much risk?
Thank you!
Regardless of the technical issues offered here, ask yourself this: Do you really want to be experimenting with a new file system on a production server with "pretty critical data"? Since you asked about "too much risk", I think you already answered the question.
Any sane process would involve installing it on a low priority test server, running for a while to see how it goes, and learning about new features or tools. After you've done that on a few lower priority servers, for maybe a year or so, then you might start to _think_ about using it on a production server like this.
My guess is that any additional speed can come from tuning other areas of your server and disk subsystem. What hardware do you have? What kind of disks? Using RAID? What level? Have you looked into aligning your partitions with the RAID blocks? I'm sure that some of the hardcore disk I/O people on the list can ask better questions and give more meaningful recommendations.