Sad state of linux filesystems
08 12 06 - 01:33 Used tags: filesystem, storage
Faced with a need for a reliable, well performing file system, a linux admin today is in a bit of a trouble. Ext2 is still in the kernel just for academic purposes, ext3 is "good enough" for majority but uselessly slow for what I want from it, reiser3 is in "don't tuch if it's not b0rken" mode but suffers from BKL use which limit its scalability, xfs and jfs are nowhere near a reliable state and reiser4 is "almost there" but due to Hans arrest, one wonders if it will ever be finished.
The more I think, the more I see there are only two usefull options for me: use Veritas VXFS, which recently became free for "smaller" installs or dump linux altogether and go with ZFS in Solaris 10. Or maybe Nexenta.
One wonders if so much choice really does make sense ... because these days it looks like FS knowhow is too much spread out and not focused on making just one, but really good FS ... As much as I despise RedHat for sticking with just ext3 in their RHEL line, at the end it would seem that was the right longterm choice.
Now if only chunkfs would become a reallity sooner ...
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