[CentOS] What FileSystems for large stores and very very large stores?

[James A. Peltier]

----- Original Message -----
| On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 11:37 AM, James A. Peltier <jpeltier at sfu.ca>
| wrote:
| >
| > As someone who has some rather large volumes for research storage I
| > will say that ALL of the file systems have limitations,
| > *especially* in the case of failures.  I have typical volumes that
| > range from 16TB up to 48TB and the big issue is when it comes to
| > performing file system checks.
| 
| Have you done anything with ceph?  With/without a filesystem on top?

Nope, went with GlusterFS testing as it was

1) Something that we could get full stack support if we opted to
2) Did as little as possible to deviate from the base OS as provided

| > So far, without a doubt, XFS has been the best "overall" file
| > system for our usages, but YMMV.  It would seem that Red Hat is
| > also pushing it as the file system of choice going forward until
| > something better ( btrfs *snicker* ) comes along.  XFS is also the
| > recommended file system for use with GlusterFS so that makes it an
| > easy choice too.
| >
| 
| Is the (snicker) from the slow development or do you think the goals
| are impossible?    Btrfs on top of ceph sounds as good as a
| posix-looking fs could get.

I don't like to start flame wars so lets just say that I think the limitations imposed on btrfs from a design perspective were such that I don't think there is a chance that it will ever get the capabilities of the file system that it is trying to compete against (ZFS).  There is a reason that the ZFS developers decided to toss out years of experience in file systems and start over.  The overhead and limitations of the traditional methods just didn't cut it.

Again, these are only my opinions, based on what I see in front of me today and taking into consideration what I saw ZFS go through over the past 5-7 years.

-- 
James A. Peltier
Manager, IT Services - Research Computing Group
Simon Fraser University - Burnaby Campus
Phone   : 778-782-6573
Fax     : 778-782-3045
E-Mail  : jpeltier at sfu.ca
Website : http://www.sfu.ca/itservices

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