Bob Hoffman wrote: > This goes out to you admins who manage servers with a heavy load of > information. > > I would like to know what you do about the number of files in a folder, or > if that is a concern. I think there is a limitation or a slow down if it > gets to big, but what is optimal (if necessary) > > Example- running a website that allows a user to upload some photos (small > ones). You get lets say 300,000 users each uploading 10 photos. That's 3 > million files. > > Storing that in one folder would seem like it would cause an issue when > using that folder, is that right? > > If it does, what do you do about that? How do you handle things? > > If you have 300,000 clients you could give them their own folder each and > then the folders would have only 10 photos, but one folder would contain > 300,000 folders. > > SO what is best for file management and system resources? > > Using hash_index on ext3 or a hashing file system helps... but in many such contexts, I've found if you can do a multi-level directory hashing scheme (compute some reproducible hash on a file name or user name/ID) and index into a directory structure, this can help. -Alan