Re: Terrabyte file systems and SL5.0
For the first time I will be using a 1-2 Terrabyte hard drive on any SL release, in particular, on an older SL5.0 (boron) OS. There's plenty on the web about pros and cons for larger file systems (resier, xfs, ext3, ext4, ...). I've usually stayed with ext3 (200-500 Gb HD that are NFS mounted to linux or windows using MS windows for unix). So, vanilla; not too splashy a set up. No clusters. I've not used LVM. I think my question is which of these choices is as well developed, mature, and easy to use as ext3 for the SL5.0 boron version of SL? I'm most familiar with ext3 and do these stray IT tasks as needed, so I've not kept up on the latest and greatest. Thanks for any comments, Bill Lutter Hi Bill - I'm running a data server with SL5.2. I have several 2-6TB filesystems and one ~21TB filesystem, all hanging off a few 3ware cards. The system has grown a bit piecemeal as our needs expanded, so there's no grand design here - basically what I could get to work. The 2-6TB filesystems are ext3. The 21TB filesystem is xfs (to echo a previous comment, make sure you use parted or similar rather than fdisk when creating a large filesystem and make a gpt label). BTW, the system is of course 64bit if that has an impact on xfs filesystems. I can say that I've been running like this for about 2-3 years with not a single issue. Granted, the server is not under a huge load, basically archive data, retrieve/access on a daily sort of timescale - ie. people grabbing a few tens of ~100MB files on a daily basis. YMMV, but that's a data point for you! -Karl -- | Karl A. Misselt Office: Steward 254 | | Steward Observatory Phone: 520-626-0196 | | University of Arizona FAX: 520-621-9555 | | Tucson, AZ 85721-0065 miss...@as.arizona.edu |
Re: Terrabyte file systems and SL5.0
Konstantin Olchanski wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 06:31:48PM -0700, Isaac wrote: Well, ext3 will supposedly work with up to 16 TB in RHEL5, so SL should have similar limits. I can confirm that at least a 7 TB ext3 filesystem is possible. I have one 8x1TB RAID5 array running ext3 built with stock SL ext3 tools. I cannot confirm the 16 TB limit. Can you point us to a reference somewhere? Here is my information: I looked into this several years ago when building an 11 TB filesystem. The SL mke2fs refused to make an ext3 filesystem that big and it turned out that mke2fs sources had a hardwired limit of 8 TB maximum filesystem size. Instead, I made an 11 TB XFS filesystem and it is still running just fine thank you very much. Here is the web page with the limits. http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/ Don't worry about the subscriptions, and assume that S.L. is equivilant to AS or Advanced Platform. One thing to note is that this page get's updates after each update, so these number apply to SL 5.5. You might run into some lower limits if you are running SL 5.0. But if you are working with 1 to 2 Terabytes, you should be fine. My opinion. I use ext3 for everything, and I have several filesystems that are in the 2 Terabyte range. If doesn't depend on how big your file system is, it depends on what you are doing with it. Only use XFS on x86_64. If you are writing, reading, and deleting lots of small files (1000 - 10,000) all the time, XFS is the winner because it deletes much much faster. Other than those two comments about XFS, I'm not going to say anymore. As I said at the beginning, I use ext3 on everything with no complaints. I plan on using ext4 when I move to SL 6. Troy -- __ Troy Dawson daw...@fnal.gov (630)840-6468 Fermilab ComputingDivision/LSCS/CSI/USS Group __
Re: Terrabyte file systems and SL5.0
A cautionary side-note: when partitioning large file systems, be sure to use parted -- not fdisk, which has a 2 TB limit. Cheers, Andy P.S. This giant table has a nice summary of FS features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems On 07/15/2010 09:49 AM, Troy Dawson wrote: Konstantin Olchanski wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 06:31:48PM -0700, Isaac wrote: Well, ext3 will supposedly work with up to 16 TB in RHEL5, so SL should have similar limits. I can confirm that at least a 7 TB ext3 filesystem is possible. I have one 8x1TB RAID5 array running ext3 built with stock SL ext3 tools. I cannot confirm the 16 TB limit. Can you point us to a reference somewhere? Here is my information: I looked into this several years ago when building an 11 TB filesystem. The SL mke2fs refused to make an ext3 filesystem that big and it turned out that mke2fs sources had a hardwired limit of 8 TB maximum filesystem size. Instead, I made an 11 TB XFS filesystem and it is still running just fine thank you very much. Here is the web page with the limits. http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/ Don't worry about the subscriptions, and assume that S.L. is equivilant to AS or Advanced Platform. One thing to note is that this page get's updates after each update, so these number apply to SL 5.5. You might run into some lower limits if you are running SL 5.0. But if you are working with 1 to 2 Terabytes, you should be fine. My opinion. I use ext3 for everything, and I have several filesystems that are in the 2 Terabyte range. If doesn't depend on how big your file system is, it depends on what you are doing with it. Only use XFS on x86_64. If you are writing, reading, and deleting lots of small files (1000 - 10,000) all the time, XFS is the winner because it deletes much much faster. Other than those two comments about XFS, I'm not going to say anymore. As I said at the beginning, I use ext3 on everything with no complaints. I plan on using ext4 when I move to SL 6. Troy
Terrabyte file systems and SL5.0
For the first time I will be using a 1-2 Terrabyte hard drive on any SL release, in particular, on an older SL5.0 (boron) OS. There's plenty on the web about pros and cons for larger file systems (resier, xfs, ext3, ext4, ...). I've usually stayed with ext3 (200-500 Gb HD that are NFS mounted to linux or windows using MS windows for unix). So, vanilla; not too splashy a set up. No clusters. I've not used LVM. I think my question is which of these choices is as well developed, mature, and easy to use as ext3 for the SL5.0 boron version of SL? I'm most familiar with ext3 and do these stray IT tasks as needed, so I've not kept up on the latest and greatest. Thanks for any comments, Bill Lutter
Re: Terrabyte file systems and SL5.0
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 06:31:48PM -0700, Isaac wrote: Well, ext3 will supposedly work with up to 16 TB in RHEL5, so SL should have similar limits. I can confirm that at least a 7 TB ext3 filesystem is possible. I have one 8x1TB RAID5 array running ext3 built with stock SL ext3 tools. I cannot confirm the 16 TB limit. Can you point us to a reference somewhere? Here is my information: I looked into this several years ago when building an 11 TB filesystem. The SL mke2fs refused to make an ext3 filesystem that big and it turned out that mke2fs sources had a hardwired limit of 8 TB maximum filesystem size. Instead, I made an 11 TB XFS filesystem and it is still running just fine thank you very much. -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
