[gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[widyachacra]

what is the best filesystem for a server

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[deface]

widyachacra wrote:
> what is the best filesystem for a server
>
>   
depends .. if your going to be housing alot (hundreds of thousands) of 
smaller files, reiser would be good. ext3 is sufficient though.
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Aaron Clark]

widyachacra wrote:
> what is the best filesystem for a server
> 

As others have said, it really depends on what you want.

e.g. For a file server you likely want XFS.

Most servers probably still run ext3, the reason for this being that 
it's very well understood and any tool for dealing with file systems 
works well with it.  Generally, the only reason to move away from ext3 
is if you have some kind of performance parameters where you need to 
take advantage of the characteristics of one of the other filesystems.

Aaron
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Tomasz Lutelmowski]

NTFS is the best one but unfortunately not fully supported by linux :/

On Mon, 19 May 2008 08:11:17 +0530, widyachacra wrote
> what is the best filesystem for a server
> 
> -- 
> ---
> PS: This is my private email address.
> 
> Budu saranay! Sadaham Phitay! Sangha Rekawaranay! {Theruwan Saranay!}
> 
> - Widyachacra Rajapaksha -
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> gentoo-server@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Gunnar Mann]

Assuming you speak about linux servers:
Ext3 is not the bleeding edge in speed when handling a lot of small 
files (rather take xfs here) but fast for normal data structures, is 
rock solid  and it's journaling feature works great. I never had any 
file system crash for years now, even when cold-hearted unplugging power 
cords from test servers.

Moreover, the successor Ext4 shall overcome the mentioned speed issue 
and has some more new features. Ext3 partitions can be used with Ext4 
software.

NTFS enjoys full read and write access from linux systems via ntfs-3g. 
Nevertheless, I would recommend using a native linux file system which 
is fully integrated (for example "acl" and "xattr" capabilities which 
are implemented in a completely different way in NTFS)

Gunnar

Tomasz Lutelmowski wrote:
> NTFS is the best one but unfortunately not fully supported by linux :/
> 
> On Mon, 19 May 2008 08:11:17 +0530, widyachacra wrote
>> what is the best filesystem for a server
>>
>> -- 
>> ---
>> PS: This is my private email address.
>>
>> Budu saranay! Sadaham Phitay! Sangha Rekawaranay! {Theruwan Saranay!}
>>
>> - Widyachacra Rajapaksha -
>> -- 
>> gentoo-server@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
> 
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Thilo Bangert]

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"Tomasz Lutelmowski" <tomek@lutel.pl> said:
> NTFS is the best one but unfortunately not fully supported by linux :/

last time i checked, NTFS (by default) cant create files named 'aux' 
or 'con'... go figure! 

that is the reason why i dislike it (apart from the one you mention). 
YMMV. why do you think NTFS is the best?

kind regards
Thilo

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[gregorcy]

Thilo Bangert wrote:
> "Tomasz Lutelmowski" <tomek@lutel.pl> said:
>> NTFS is the best one but unfortunately not fully supported by linux :/
> 
> last time i checked, NTFS (by default) cant create files named 'aux' 
> or 'con'... go figure! 
> 
> that is the reason why i dislike it (apart from the one you mention). 
> YMMV. why do you think NTFS is the best?
> 
> kind regards
> Thilo

I would like to know too,

I have had a bunch of issues with one of our fileservers when it was a NTFS filesystem.  Permissions would get screwed 
up, and random files were undeletable.  Moved over to samba on an XFS filesystem and have not had any problems.

Hopefully this doesn't start a flame war or anything, I would just like to know if I missed something.

--Brian
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Edward Muller]

reiserfs, purely from the recovery angle.

Its also decently fast and really good with lots of small files.

On May 18, 2008, at 7:41 PM, widyachacra wrote:

> what is the best filesystem for a server
>
> -- 
> ---
> PS: This is my private email address.
>
> Budu saranay! Sadaham Phitay! Sangha Rekawaranay! {Theruwan Saranay!}
>
> - Widyachacra Rajapaksha -
> -- 
> gentoo-server@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>

--
Edward Muller
email/jabber: emuller@engineyard.com



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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Oliver Schad]

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Am Mittwoch, 21. Mai 2008 schrieb mir Edward Muller:
> reiserfs, purely from the recovery angle.

Yeah, if you have fuck up in the B-Trees, it's the best filesystem purely from 
the rubbish heap's angle.

regards
Oli

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Wendall Cada]

Oliver Schad wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 21. Mai 2008 schrieb mir Edward Muller:
>   
>> reiserfs, purely from the recovery angle.
>>     
>
> Yeah, if you have fuck up in the B-Trees, it's the best filesystem purely from 
> the rubbish heap's angle.
>
> regards
> Oli
>   

Oli is correct. If reiser dies, the data is completely lost. It writes 
to the journal first, then writes the data. That, and when it decides to 
completely kill your B-Trees, you're screwed. After three unrecoverable 
reiserfs issues, I moved over to ext3 and have been very happy.

I personally think the speed differences on most production servers is 
negligible. At the end of the day, I'd much rather have my data intact 
than have it be X% faster in certain situations. Also, ext3 has quite a 
few configuration options to optimize for your particular needs. See 
/etc/mke2fs.conf for some example configurations. The main problem 
you'll have with ext3 is that you cannot change to things like the block 
size or number of inodes on-the-fly like you can with xfs. So make sure 
what you format with will suit your needs. The one other major strength 
of ext3 is that it is able to change to ext2 or ext4 without 
reformatting the partition. You cannot do this with reiser or any of the 
others. reiserfs3 is not compatible with reiserfs4 for example.

And I've got to think that the NTFS comment was entirely sarcasm.

Wendall
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Christian Bricart]

widyachacra wrote:
> what is the best filesystem for a server
> 
Take http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388 for some facts.

Christian



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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[A. Khattri]

On Tue, 20 May 2008, Wendall Cada wrote:

> Oli is correct. If reiser dies, the data is completely lost. It writes to 
> the journal first, then writes the data. That, and when it decides to 
> completely kill your B-Trees, you're screwed. After three unrecoverable 
> reiserfs issues, I moved over to ext3 and have been very happy.

Yep, Ive had the same experience with Reiser.

Im suprised noone has mentioned that XFS uses lots of caching and so would 
be good but only if your server is on a UPS or has redundant power 
supplies.

And forget about NTFS.

Technical arguments aside, if you're serious about data loss and/or 
performance, you would be using hardware RAID anyway. 3ware cards are 
pretty cheap and the extra money is well worth it for peace of mind.



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A
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[RijilV]

2008/5/24 A. Khattri <ajai@bway.net>:
> Technical arguments aside, if you're serious about data loss and/or
> performance, you would be using hardware RAID anyway. 3ware cards are pretty
> cheap and the extra money is well worth it for peace of mind.


+1 for 3ware.

Also, the initial problem with this thread is that there were no
requirements listed.  What's the best file system largely depends on
what you're doing.  If its a IMAP server VS an Oracle database, you'd
pick two entirely different filesystems.

Asking a what the best filesystem is without any qualifications or
requirements doesn't give you a very good answer, more likely you're
going to get which filesystem has the most fans.

.r'
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[Michelangelo]

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Summing it up, IMHO.

- NTFS is not a choice, really, you wanna stay in linux land. Besides, you
would have to find some tool|workaround for defragmenting it :/
- reiserfs is not that manageable: as others said, it does not allow
recovery from filesystem damage (let alone from hd failure). Reiserfs4
promised a breakthru, but right now is not ready to be used.
- ext3 has got decent performance for general purpose servers as well as
desktop boxes, and you can find lot of recovery tools (even some win32
ones), so this is my main choice
- go XFS on "big" servers with all the standard redundant hw equipment, but
only if you foresee heavy filesystem workload



Besides, RAID 5 is not always a good choice: I got 2 adaptec and 3ware cards
that got them bioses/nvram messed up thanks to power spikes during the big
italian blackout back in 2003. And yes, they were behind  online APC ups
Mic

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 7:23 PM, RijilV <rijilv@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/5/24 A. Khattri <ajai@bway.net>:
> > Technical arguments aside, if you're serious about data loss and/or
> > performance, you would be using hardware RAID anyway. 3ware cards are
> pretty
> > cheap and the extra money is well worth it for peace of mind.
>
>
> +1 for 3ware.
>
> Also, the initial problem with this thread is that there were no
> requirements listed.  What's the best file system largely depends on
> what you're doing.  If its a IMAP server VS an Oracle database, you'd
> pick two entirely different filesystems.
>
> Asking a what the best filesystem is without any qualifications or
> requirements doesn't give you a very good answer, more likely you're
> going to get which filesystem has the most fans.
>
> .r'
> --
> gentoo-server@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[A. Khattri]

On Sat, 24 May 2008, Michelangelo wrote:

> Besides, RAID 5 is not always a good choice: I got 2 adaptec and 3ware cards
> that got them bioses/nvram messed up thanks to power spikes during the big
> italian blackout back in 2003. And yes, they were behind  online APC ups

We use RAID 1 but generally our servers are located in a data center. We 
survived the big New York blackout a few years back plus several other 
power problems in the datacenter. Our 3Ware and Adaptec RAID cards were 
unaffected by any of these outages.



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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

["Todd M. Hébert"]

We use RAID 1 on servers that are not file servers, RAID 4 or 5 on file-servers (depending on how much need for redundancy we have on a particular filer) and back up the RAID4/5 partitions to tape daily. (with the RAID 1's backed up to the RAID 4/5's before those are backed-up to tape.) Tapes are taken off-site daily. (with backup/restore procedures tested monthly. etc.. )

We're in a data centre that isn't likely to have blackouts.  (It can run on batteries for 6 hours, and has diesel generators with 48-hours worth of fuel on-site, as well as an emergency supply-chain for the diesel.)

I've not seen problems as described below on 3Ware cards... I believe the configuration for each RAID is is backed-up on each disk in the RAID set.  I've never had a problem with those.  (I have seen a problem with another brand of SATA RAID controller, when in RAID 1 mode, putting a blank replacement in a bank after a drive failed caused the controller to rebuild the BLANK drive onto the GOOD drive.. erasing all the data.. thank goodness for data recovery.. we had to get the data back of the drive that had gone bad, and managed to retrieve it all!)

XFS filesystems no all of the above, just for reference.


A. Khattri wrote:
> On Sat, 24 May 2008, Michelangelo wrote:
> 
>> Besides, RAID 5 is not always a good choice: I got 2 adaptec and 3ware 
>> cards
>> that got them bioses/nvram messed up thanks to power spikes during the 
>> big
>> italian blackout back in 2003. And yes, they were behind  online APC ups
> 
> We use RAID 1 but generally our servers are located in a data center. We 
> survived the big New York blackout a few years back plus several other 
> power problems in the datacenter. Our 3Ware and Adaptec RAID cards were 
> unaffected by any of these outages.
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[RijilV]

2008/6/9 "Todd M. Hébert" <todd@iil.ie>:
> We use RAID 1 on servers that are not file servers, RAID 4 or 5 on
> file-servers (depending on how much need for redundancy we have on a

Doesn't RAID 4 and 5 offer the same level of protection?   I thought
the only difference was RAID4 had a dedicated parity device whereas
RAID5 stripes parity information across all devices.  In either case,
loose two drives and the RAID is toast.


> We're in a data centre that isn't likely to have blackouts.  (It can run on
> batteries for 6 hours, and has diesel generators with 48-hours worth of fuel
> on-site, as well as an emergency supply-chain for the diesel.)

I too have been in very very high profile very very nice data centers
with a jabillion hours of battery backup and even more of generator
power.   One time someone hit the BIG RED BUTTON on the floor where
our gear was caged and presto - power was gone.  Another time the city
cut the power mains to the building, and the generator that was
supposta supply half of our racks someone had left in "manual" mode as
apposed to automatic, thus taking out a fair number of our servers.  I
think if you ask any sufficiently large group of people for horor
stories of power going out in a N+2 redundant power environmnet,
you'll get way more than you were looking for.


> I've not seen problems as described below on 3Ware cards... I believe the
> configuration for each RAID is is backed-up on each disk in the RAID set.
>  I've never had a problem with those.  (I have seen a problem with another

I too have only ever had wonderful experiences with 3Ware cards under
Linux.  I've not had one of their cards fail, but have had backplanes
fail and bad cables.   Diagonosing and getting your vendor to admit to
a bad backplane generally requires more than one outtage :(  Now LSI
cards on the otherhand have caused me some grief.


> XFS filesystems no all of the above, just for reference.

FWIW, always have run ext3, unless it was before ext3 was 'stable',
then it was ext2.

.r'
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

["Todd M. Hébert"]

Whether the RAID is toast due to the loss of two drives depends on how many drives you're striping the data across and how many parity drives you have.

With RAID 5, if you have 9 drives you end up with one dedicated for parity, and the system should keep running with a loss of 2 drives without incident. (provided that you replace the 2 affected drives before a third fails.)

I believe you can lose three drives out of 9 as long as it's not the parity drive on RAID 5.

On RAID 4, how many drives you can lose depends on whether you are running single or dual parity, and how many you have overall.  You can run 8 data drives plus dual parity.. in this configuration you should be able to lose 2 data drives AND a parity drive (out of a 10-drive configuration) before data becomes endangered. (or 3 data drives.)

The major difference between 4 & 5 is being able to resize the RAID set on the fly.  (adding drives to the RAID pool without having to completely rebuild it.)

The data centre that we're in tests their battery backup once each week, and the diesel generators once a month.  There are two completely discrete power systems (from the cabling that our servers connect to, which are always dual-powered, through the battery backups, and the generators. There is a spare battery backup system that can be manually shunted into place in the even that either of the primaries fails to perform... takes only a few huge switches to change over, and all our networking kit is duplicated, so we can run without incident if we lose either of our power feeds singly.)  We have had zero downtime due to any faults in equipment owned by the data centre since opening in 1999... 3 other data centres within 10 miles of here have had serious outages, including all-day outages, due to faults in their failover.. the guys we lease our space from really know what they're doing.)

--Todd


RijilV wrote:
> 2008/6/9 "Todd M. Hébert" <todd@iil.ie>:
>> We use RAID 1 on servers that are not file servers, RAID 4 or 5 on
>> file-servers (depending on how much need for redundancy we have on a
> 
> Doesn't RAID 4 and 5 offer the same level of protection?   I thought
> the only difference was RAID4 had a dedicated parity device whereas
> RAID5 stripes parity information across all devices.  In either case,
> loose two drives and the RAID is toast.
> 
> 
>> We're in a data centre that isn't likely to have blackouts.  (It can run on
>> batteries for 6 hours, and has diesel generators with 48-hours worth of fuel
>> on-site, as well as an emergency supply-chain for the diesel.)
> 
> I too have been in very very high profile very very nice data centers
> with a jabillion hours of battery backup and even more of generator
> power.   One time someone hit the BIG RED BUTTON on the floor where
> our gear was caged and presto - power was gone.  Another time the city
> cut the power mains to the building, and the generator that was
> supposta supply half of our racks someone had left in "manual" mode as
> apposed to automatic, thus taking out a fair number of our servers.  I
> think if you ask any sufficiently large group of people for horor
> stories of power going out in a N+2 redundant power environmnet,
> you'll get way more than you were looking for.
> 
> 
>> I've not seen problems as described below on 3Ware cards... I believe the
>> configuration for each RAID is is backed-up on each disk in the RAID set.
>>  I've never had a problem with those.  (I have seen a problem with another
> 
> I too have only ever had wonderful experiences with 3Ware cards under
> Linux.  I've not had one of their cards fail, but have had backplanes
> fail and bad cables.   Diagonosing and getting your vendor to admit to
> a bad backplane generally requires more than one outtage :(  Now LSI
> cards on the otherhand have caused me some grief.
> 
> 
>> XFS filesystems no all of the above, just for reference.
> 
> FWIW, always have run ext3, unless it was before ext3 was 'stable',
> then it was ext2.
> 

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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[kashani]

A. Khattri wrote:
> On Sat, 24 May 2008, Michelangelo wrote:
> 
>> Besides, RAID 5 is not always a good choice: I got 2 adaptec and 3ware 
>> cards
>> that got them bioses/nvram messed up thanks to power spikes during the 
>> big
>> italian blackout back in 2003. And yes, they were behind  online APC ups
> 
> We use RAID 1 but generally our servers are located in a data center. We 
> survived the big New York blackout a few years back plus several other 
> power problems in the datacenter. Our 3Ware and Adaptec RAID cards were 
> unaffected by any of these outages.

One thing people often forget is that the write cache on your disks need 
to either have a battery backup like your RAID card or be turned off.

kashani
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[JD Gray]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 9:29 AM, "Todd M. Hébert" <todd@iil.ie> wrote:
> The major difference between 4 & 5 is being able to resize the RAID set on
> the fly.  (adding drives to the RAID pool without having to completely
> rebuild it.)

Which can have disks added on the fly without rebuilding the raid?

-JD
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Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

["Todd M. Hébert"]

RAID 4. (Widely used in SAN appliances such as NetApp's StoreVault line.)

--Todd

JD Gray wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 9:29 AM, "Todd M. Hébert" <todd@iil.ie> wrote:
>> The major difference between 4 & 5 is being able to resize the RAID set on
>> the fly.  (adding drives to the RAID pool without having to completely
>> rebuild it.)
> 
> Which can have disks added on the fly without rebuilding the raid?
> 
> -JD

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