[CentOS] Calling All FS Fanatics

[Kirk Bocek]

Steve Bergman wrote:
> I would be interested to see your results if you care to try ext2.  The
> kernel guys are pretty well committed to supporting it long term. They
> are absolutely *anal* about making changes which could destabilize it in
> any way.

I finally figured out my slowdown problem: I had somehow turned off 
write-caching on the 3Ware controller. Hoo-Boy! Does that kill throughput! 
What the heck is that option for anyway?

Here are a handful of bonnie++ benchmarks, I decided to just quote the block 
write and block read numbers:

         MB/Sec
         Write   Read
XFS:    231     202
ext2, dir_index:
         221     205
ext3, dir_index, data=ordered:
         80      196
ext3, dir_index, data=writeback:
         95      199
ext3, data=writeback:
         95      201

As you hinted, ext2 has almost the same performance as XFS. Data=writeback on 
ext3 helps some but not a whole lot. Dir_index doesn't seem to do a thing.

I'm really torn here. I can make use of the extra write speeds of ext2 or XFS. 
But is XFS stable and supported enough for 'production' use? Will I regret a 
forced fsck on a 1TB ext2 volume?

Steve, you say you've been happy with XFS for a few years. Have you been using 
it under any kind of load?

Kirk Bocek