[CentOS] mkfs.ext3 on a 9TB volume

Mon Sep 12 03:34:33 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 21:01 -0400, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> Having hit a similar issue (big FS, I wanted XFS, but needed to run centos 
> 4), I just went ahead and stuck with ext3.  My FS is 5.5TiB -- a software 
> RAID0 across 2 3w-9xxx arrays.  I had no issues formatting it and have had 
> no issues in testing or production with it.  So, it can be done.

I don't think I _ever_ said it couldn't be done.
In fact, the Ext3 support is now up to 17.6TB (16TiB) now.

But is there any guarantee that volume will work if moved to another set
of hardware, kernels, etc...???  As I said, I _never_ create Ext3
filesystems greater than 1TB for this reason.  1TB is the "common
denominator" when it comes to Ext3.

> Perhaps the bugs you're hitting are in the FC driver layer?

There's all sorts of "requirements" for Ext3 sizes above 1TB, and
assuming it will always work is an assumption I'm not willing to make
with my client's data.  But that's just me.  I have to see repeatable
results, and I have not with Ext3 above 1TB.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Red Hat's going to wake up sooner or later and realize it's just
as Sun said, they have not addressed the enterprise filesystem issue.
I'm sure SGI and the XFS team would be more than happy to see some
engagement from Red Hat on this matter -- and have wished for years now
-- and the said thing is that it would _help_ Red Hat's future.  XFS is
the only option -- ReiserFS and JFS have interface/compatibility issues
that are "show stoppers" for Red Hat.  XFS has not, and the only issues
are newer kernel/distribution developments that just need to be
addressed at a distro-level.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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