[SATLUG] choosing a filesystem

[Daniel J. Givens]

I used to use reiserfs, but moved over to xfs for my media storage
earlier last year because it performs better with larger files. I also
moved ahead with using it on my desktop and I think it may be slightly
faster, but not exceptionally so. Combined with lvm, it makes for nice
expansion possibilities, but you would have that with lvm and reiserfs
or ext3. One of the features that reiserfs and ext3 have over xfs is
that when using lvm, you can reduce their size. Unfortunately, you
can't do that with xfs.

To be honest, I think ext3 is great all around filesystem. It's been
very stable, degrades to ext2 just fine, and with ext4 in the works,
looks like it could have a nice upgrade path. They all provide
journaling, so there is no real difference there, but xfs does mount
and dismount much more quickly than ext3 or reiserfs. I just set up a
LAMP server and a Postfix/Cyrus server for a client and went with ext3
for its stability and comparable performance. With their fast drives,
the systems both rock.

As for your running Apache in the VMWare instance, have you thought
about using xen to get native speeds? If performance isn't an issue,
then your current solution works just fine, I'm sure. But who doesn't
want a little more speed? :P

Alex Bartonek wrote:
> I downloaded SuSE 10.2 and noticed the default fs is
> ext3.  I currently use reiserfs and its served me
> well..I've "accidentally" powered off my system and
> others a few times only to have reiserfs save my hide.
> I've done some reading on reiser vs. ext3 vs. xfs etc
> but want to know if there are any stats on which is
> best for desktop use.  (head to head comparison would
> be nice)  For what I do..video editing would be the
> biggest hd hog, but I also run a VMWare session which
> is my webserver and another vm machine.
> 
> Alex
> 
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