[DRBD-user] Ext4

Christian Balzer chibi at gol.com
Thu Oct 15 04:49:08 CEST 2009

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:45:59 +0100 Tim O'Donovan wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with ext4? I'm in the process of putting
> together some plans for a 2TB, RAID 10 backed, 2 node DRBD cluster to
> run an NFS based file server, and I'm trying decide whether to stick
> with ext3 or take the plunge into the world of ext4. The file server
> will be the backend for a cluster of mail servers.
>
I would guess that your biggest impact on performance will NFS and not the
underlying file system on the server. 
That said, all the literature on ext4 looked good. Alas real life tests on
the same hardware with a 2.6.30 kernel delivered worse results (bonnie,
wall time, postmark) across the board for ext4 compared to ext3. 
The lower create/delete rates for files would be of particular impact for
a mail (maildir at least) storage. Ultimately just test things on your
actual hardware to determine what is best for you.
I'm just phasing in a new mail storage cluster (no NFS) and while ReiserFS
is still the best (by design) FS for a maildir storage (the current mail
storage cluster uses reiser3) the uncertain future of it and the raw
performance numbers made me choose ext3.

In a year or 2 the best choice will likely be btrfs, but that is not here
nor now.

Regards,

Christian
-- 
Christian Balzer        Network/Systems Engineer                
chibi at gol.com   	Global OnLine Japan/Fusion Communications
http://www.gol.com/



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