Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

Fruity · 2010-12-03 09:38:22

I wondered across this fine artical this morning, and thought I would share it with the community.

Quote:

Let's start from the most obvious: the best balanced filesystem seems to be the mature, almost aging EXT3. This is natural, as it received most cumulative improvements over a long period of time. It has very good sequential and random write speeds and reasonable read speed, factors that are of utmost importance on several different tasks. For example, if you plan to run a database server you are almost forced to use EXT3, as all other filesystems seems to have big problems with synchronized random write speed. Also, you can't go wrong with EXT3 if you use it on your workstation as its performances are quite good in a great amount of different jobs. Finally, EXT3 is more stable than the others FS as most of its bug are by now already worked out.
However, this not means that EXT3 is the perfect FS: first, it that lacks some important features as delayed allocation and online compression. It lacks native snapshots capability also but you can use LVM to overcome this. It is more fragmentation-prone that EXT4 and XFS and it is very slow in creating/deleting large amount of files, denoting a not-so-good metadata handling. Moreover, it use more CPU cycles than EXT4 and XFS, but with todays CPU I don't think that this is a great problem. If you can live with these minor faults, EXT3 is the right filesystem for you.

Please don't just read that one paragraph though, they have ten pages worth of detailed and varied benchmarks they used to form that opinion. And the artical is dated from the middle of last month, nice and recent

Interesting stuff, I thought that ext4 would do better (not that it did poorly, but relative to ext3) And that btrfs wouldnt be as slow as it currently seems, though as the tester commented, it's a very new filesystem. Maybe Arch should ship btrfs as an install option? Help these guys iron out the bugs!

Misfit138 · 2010-12-03 17:06:23

Interesting.
Oh, and, JFS FTW.

I see no reason to use anything else at this time. Funny thing, one's choice for a GNU/Linux filesystem is about as touchy as one's choice of truck.

Dodge RAM 2500 Cummins Turbodiesel FTW.

litemotiv · 2010-12-03 18:42:53

Misfit138 wrote:

Dodge RAM 2500 Cummins Turbodiesel FTW.

Looks like you can easily fit a troop of KD's Black Mouths back in there!

[/stalker]

Misfit138 · 2010-12-03 20:30:41

litemotiv wrote:

Misfit138 wrote:
Dodge RAM 2500 Cummins Turbodiesel FTW.
Looks like you can easily fit a troop of KD's Black Mouths back in there!
[/stalker]

O! How naughty!

fukawi2 · 2010-12-03 22:26:36

Misfit138 wrote:

Dodge RAM 2500 Cummins Turbodiesel FTW.

F650 FTW

Hide · 2010-12-03 22:35:25

I don't know first thing about cars, but this... monster seems like it could pull a tank out of quicksand

broch · 2010-12-04 00:17:34

so in short, someone got bored, had no idea about experimental conditions set thing up and published because internet will take anything.

So why this fine article is worth reading?

Misfit138 · 2010-12-04 02:13:33

fukawi2 wrote:

Misfit138 wrote:
Dodge RAM 2500 Cummins Turbodiesel FTW.
F650 FTW

Well if you go there, then I have to pull out my Chevy Kodiak Pickup.

Last edited by Misfit138 (2010-12-04 02:13:59)

skottish · 2010-12-04 04:31:20

Hiya Misfit.

I ride a bicycle and use ext4 mostly. I love dogs but none live with me. What kind of truck am I?

fukawi2 · 2010-12-04 06:50:05

Misfit138 wrote:

Well if you go there, then I have to pull out my Chevy Kodiak Pickup.

I liiiike

Misfit138 · 2010-12-04 13:29:34

skottish wrote:

Hiya Misfit.
I ride a bicycle and use ext4 mostly. I love dogs but none live with me. What kind of truck am I?

Hmm.. No dogs and you ride a bicycle...hmm.. WHAT? You use EXT4?! Then you are one of these.

Fruity · 2010-12-05 13:15:14

Cool 10 replies, and maybe one relevant to the original post.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … _Hijacking

Some, should know better.

litemotiv · 2010-12-05 13:46:53

Fruity wrote:

Cool 10 replies, and maybe one relevant to the original post.

Yeah and that one was trolling.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … _Hijacking
Some, should know better.

Sorry...ontopic from now on!

P.s., what happened to your avatar??

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-12-05 13:52:04)

AaronD · 2010-12-06 03:35:19

Am I the only one concerned about the slow progress of BTRFS? It seems to be veering into Reiser4 territory--much hope and advocacy without much to show for it.

I am willing to admit that I am impatient for The Next Shiny Big Thing(tm).

falconindy · 2010-12-06 04:19:28

AaronD wrote:

Am I the only one concerned about the slow progress of BTRFS? It seems to be veering into Reiser4 territory--much hope and advocacy without much to show for it.

There's thousands of lines of code committed every kernel release. What slow progress do you speak of?

Last edited by falconindy (2010-12-06 04:19:50)

Ranguvar · 2010-12-07 03:50:13

Btrfs -- I wish they would work a little more on some of the worrisome speeds I am seeing in some benchmarks, as well as touting its advantages more -- because to be honest, I haven't seen any big advantages for Joe User that would convince them to switch from, say, ext4. I see a lot of "we want to be like ZFS", but I don't particularly need most of what ZFS provides. Although I suppose then it could just not be for me.

As for Reiser4, they had (and have) a lot to show for it. The very vast majority of the remaining problems are to do with kernel politics and structuring -- what should belong in what layer, etc. It's being actively maintained by Edward Shisken, you can try his patches, the filesystem itself is from what I can tell very stable and powerful (I don't use it because I'd rather have the wide recovery tool and partition management tool support ext4 enjoys).

AaronD · 2010-12-07 06:50:53

falconindy wrote:

There's thousands of lines of code committed every kernel release. What slow progress do you speak of?

That is my point. Yes, development is very active but it seems to be stuck on the most important criteria. It gets its clock cleaned in benchmark tests and still occasionally foams at the mouth. Maintenance tools are still lacking also.

I understand it is an ambitious project--far more ambitious than ext4. I hope it lives up to the promise.

litemotiv · 2010-12-07 08:30:49

Ranguvar wrote:

As for Reiser4, they had (and have) a lot to show for it. The very vast majority of the remaining problems are to do with kernel politics and structuring -- what should belong in what layer, etc. It's being actively maintained by Edward Shisken, you can try his patches, the filesystem itself is from what I can tell very stable and powerful (I don't use it because I'd rather have the wide recovery tool and partition management tool support ext4 enjoys).

Yes, i feel that modern benchmarks should also include Nilfs2 and Reiser4.

Misfit138 · 2010-12-10 20:21:57

Filesystems seem to take years to complete, and by the time they're all patched and debugged, they're obsolete..
And now that I think of it, that could be said for a lot of things.

ammon · 2010-12-10 23:33:33

Does anyone have experience with btrfs and using it as /var partition? I want to know how it is behaving with lots of small files.

FSX · 2010-12-11 16:47:48

I decided to give JFS a try. Works good so far and haven't had any slow moments.

Ranguvar · 2010-12-12 22:55:51

ammon wrote:

Does anyone have experience with btrfs and using it as /var partition? I want to know how it is behaving with lots of small files.

At a vague guess, I would say not too well -- it stores a lot of metadata, it seems, which would not be good for small-file performance.
If you want small-file performance, you want ReiserFS or Reiser4.

deficite · 2010-12-13 05:35:05

I've been more than happy with ext4 honestly. I don't really agree with it saying that saying that if you're running a database you're forced to use ext3. When I think of MySQL I think XFS personally. JFS is probably my second favorite after ext4 (ext3 with dir_index is up there too). Reiser3 is nice, I'd probably put that as my third favorite.

ammon · 2010-12-14 18:32:46

I've compiled stock arch kernel (.36) with reiser4 patch, everything seems fine when I test it.
mkfs.reiser4 /dev/sda5
mount -t reiser4 /dev/sda5 /media/reiser4
dmesg -> reiser4: sda5: found disk format 4.0.0.

But it fails to mount it during boot. I try to use this as /var partition.
Fstab:
/dev/sda5 /var reiser4 defaults,notail 0 1

I have reiser4 in rc.conf (modules).

Edit:
Found it, notail options is to blame.
However, some of the files are missing after move to reiser4.

Last edited by ammon (2010-12-14 19:20:10)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-03 09:38:22

Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#2 2010-12-03 17:06:23

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#3 2010-12-03 18:42:53

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#4 2010-12-03 20:30:41

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#5 2010-12-03 22:26:36

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#6 2010-12-03 22:35:25

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#7 2010-12-04 00:17:34

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#8 2010-12-04 02:13:33

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#9 2010-12-04 04:31:20

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#10 2010-12-04 06:50:05

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#11 2010-12-04 13:29:34

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#12 2010-12-05 13:15:14

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#13 2010-12-05 13:46:53

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#14 2010-12-06 03:35:19

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#15 2010-12-06 04:19:28

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#16 2010-12-07 03:50:13

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#17 2010-12-07 06:50:53

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#18 2010-12-07 08:30:49

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#19 2010-12-10 20:21:57

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#20 2010-12-10 23:33:33

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#21 2010-12-11 16:47:48

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#22 2010-12-12 22:55:51

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#23 2010-12-13 05:35:05

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

#24 2010-12-14 18:32:46

Re: Filesystems benchmarked: EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS vs BTRFS

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