BTRFS vs EXT3 vs EXT4 vs XFS performance on Fedora 17
/ 13
Linux filesystems are a moving target: each new kernel release can potentially alter their performance and reliability. So, its interesting to periodically measure filesystems performance. This time, I used the newly-released Fedora 17 (amd64 version, 3.4.x kernel branch). We already know the contenders:
- ext3, the classic Linux filesystem
- ext4, the natural ext3 successor as default Linux filesystem
- xfs, an high performance filesystem designed with scalability in mind
- btrfs, the new, actively developed, feature-rich filesystem (which, recently, has been propesed as the new Linux default filesystem)
Note that this article has a focus on performance. For an in-depth, feature-based comparison, you can see the relative Wikipedia page [1].
Remember that different usage patterns can favor different filesystems, so I don't pretend to elect the best, stronger filesystem on earth. I simply want to give you some numbers collected in a quite various usage pattern, so that I can help you in the choice of the right filesystem for some common jobs.
Comments
apart the write barriers option (which was manually enabled on all filesystems, ext3 included) I left the default mount options at their default settings.
To tell the truth, Fedora enable barriers by default on ext3 also; however, this is a Fedora-specific change that not all distributions followed (apart SuSe, I think).
The rationale behind this decision to not mess with mount options is that, as default settings are the most used settings, they _must_ be adequate; the failure to set them to reasonable default will affect many users.
On the other hand, write barriers should really be enabled to do an apple-to-apple comparison, so it is the only option I wish to manually enable.
Regards.
However, I read on the first page of this article [2] the use of Fedora 17 3.4.x kernel branch.
I may be wrong (I do not use Fedora) but please explain where have you find this Linux kernel version within Fedora 17.
PS: I like article of this high quality, thanks ;)
[1] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_for_Sysadmin.html#id579836
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_%28operating_system%29#cite_ref-47
[2] http://www.ilsistemista.net/index.php/linux-a-unix/33-btrfs-vs-ext3-vs-ext4-vs-xfs-performance-on-fedora-17.html
you are right: F17 base image ships with kernel version 3.3.x.
However, a yum update resulted in kernel 3.4.x being installed, so I tested with this updated kernel release.
See here also: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=754481
Regards.
OK I see "F16 and F17 will be rebased around the time 3.4.1 is released" on the bottom of the page.
RSS feed for comments to this post