file system performance

[Roger Heflin]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com 
> [mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Mark Haney
> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 3:45 PM
> To: 'For users of Fedora Core releases'
> Subject: file system performance
> 
> The perpetual question:  which linux filesystem is preferred on large
> (>2TB) arrays? I'm thinking of just general all around 
> performance as this fs is only going to store data.
> 

Mark,

I have not seen it matter much, some of the odd filesystems
handle lots of small files better, but all typically stream large
amounts of data at about the same speed.  ext3 is in general
the best tested because of how many people use it.

If you use something like ext3 you will want to investiage
the -N/i options on mkfs as you will want to reduce the inodes
down to a more manageable number to speed up the fsck time
when one is required.   On a filesystem that will only have
really large files use "-N 65536", that will typically reduce
the number to the fewest allowed (quite a bit more than 65536),
and decrease the fsck time by many many times.

                       Roger