Raid1 + NFS performance. Which filesystem to choose?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi!

I’m changing hard disk on my home server (Opensuse 12.2-i586). Now I have one disk which is mountes by three clients through NFS and samba.
I’m going to change disk for 2 HDD-1TB in raid1 software ( mdadm).

I’m reading some things about the filesystem to choose but I’ not so sure. ext4 seems to be fine, xfs seems to be better but I’ve read ( File System Choice for NFS Servers | peacon) that it has issues with mdadm.

I’m not sure about btrfs: With btrfs it’s possible to create the raid1 apart from mdadm, but i’m not sure if it’s better than ext4 and it’s performance with NFS. I’m afraid it’s still a bot experimental.

anyone can tell his experience about it?

regards

2

Unless you want to experiment I’d stick to ext4.

I was told recently by one of the btrfs advocates that the RAID features of btrfs are not there yet. See the discussion in the beta forum

3

Hi fperal,

you may want a reliable file system,
so that your files don’t get crunched ?

That’s it.

See

OK, you would like to have max performance.

But can you imagine how that performance breaks down if you have errors in your file system?

I think the answer of gogalthorp was pretty good !

Good luck
Mike

4

fperal wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I’m changing hard disk on my home server (Opensuse 12.2-i586). Now I
> have one disk which is mountes by three clients through NFS and samba.
> I’m going to change disk for 2 HDD-1TB in raid1 software ( mdadm).
>
> I’m reading some things about the filesystem to choose but I’ not so
> sure. ext4 seems to be fine, xfs seems to be better but I’ve read (
> ‘File System Choice for NFS Servers | peacon’
> (http://blog.peacon.co.uk/file-system-choice-for-nfs-servers/)) that it
> has issues with mdadm.
>
> I’m not sure about btrfs: With btrfs it’s possible to create the raid1
> apart from mdadm, but i’m not sure if it’s better than ext4 and it’s
> performance with NFS. I’m afraid it’s still a bot experimental.
>
> anyone can tell his experience about it?

It all depends on your workload, so nobody can tell you.

I use xfs with mdadm and it works. But it’s slow on part of my workload.
I use ext4 a bit, but it’s even slower. My main workhorse is still
reiser3, which works best for me.

5

I use XFS, I have never had a problem with it. Also you do not have to worry about the 68 day fsck check that the exts have. And I always have to hold the Y for an hour when an ext3 box crashes or power loss, have not tried ext4.

Dave W

6

On 10/07/2013 10:46 AM, dwestf wrote:
>
> I use XFS, I have never had a problem with it. Also you do not have to
> worry about the 68 day fsck check that the exts have. And I always have
> to hold the Y for an hour when an ext3 box crashes or power loss, have
> not tried ext4.

You need to investigate the tune2fs command to find out how to change the days
between fsck runs.

7

Yes, I know that you can change the number of days. Not sure if you can turn if off. But the real problem is that I have never seen ext3 recover from loss of power with out a long manual fsck. Where as I have never seen XFS not come right back up.

Dave

8

ext4 recovers from power loss with no problem

9

On 2013-10-15 14:46, dwestf wrote:
>
> Yes, I know that you can change the number of days. Not sure if you can
> turn if off. But the real problem is that I have never seen ext3
> recover from loss of power with out a long manual fsck. Where as I have
> never seen XFS not come right back up.

I did, once.

I fact I have seen all with a royal class crash: reiserfs, ext3, and
xfs, on different occasions.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))