Best Filesystem for web service

LordShryku

I don't know that this is even a relevant question, or if it would have any impact on performance, but I figure I'd throw it out and see what everyone says.

I'm about to rebuild yet another server with Gentoo (no dale, not FreeBSD :p), and I'm looking at my filesystem options. I usually just use ext3, but then I know XFS is great for high-end SCSI disks, and ReiserFS is supposed to outperform both of those when dealing with small files (less then 4k). So really, I'm wondering what everyone thinks is the better filesystem to use here. Have you experienced any better performance using one over the other?

Sxooter

I generally use ext3 because it's a known quantity, and works well enough. It's probably more important to make sure they're mounted noatime than anything else.

LordShryku

Yeah, I've used ext3 for all my servers. Just after reading a little bit on the other filesystems (Reiser4 release spawned this research), I was just curious if there were performance gains among the other available FS's. Especially in a high load server environment. Maybe I'll just have to load them up and test them...

Sxooter

There are benchmarks out there. Basicaly, unless you're writing a lot, a web server isn't likely to notice a lot of difference. Now if you're running a database, XFS seems to be a consistent winner, with JFS right behind.

goldbug

I've used ext3, reiser, and JFS under Gentoo so far. I'd say just from the "me" benchmark, that Reiser and JFS both outperform ext3 soundly, but noticeable difference between the two (Reiser/JFS), in my usage, is very similar.

Of course, I'm probably not dealing with the same average file size that a web service would, so in that case, Reiser might be the best bet (small file performance).

On a somewhat tangent note: I have noticed that Reiser can run fsck much faster than JFS, so if you need to hard-reboot, that'll shave off some seconds 🙂