[dba-Tech] Microsoft or Linux

[Jim Lawrence]

Hi Peter:

File systems are a very large subject and one of my favourite topics for investigation so here is a basic overview.

A good file system is important, perhaps ultimately important. NT, I think it is on version 3.5 and is a very good FS, with almost fifteen years of service but there are many equally as good and some better systems out there. Apple APFS finally upgraded its file system so it can actually be used, in theory (as it is less than a year old), in enterprise surroundings or even be used in a server. ;-)

Here is a good partial list: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

File systems that shouldn't be used are the old Apple, HFS, any FAT FS (there must be ten versions?) and there is a number of aversions, ReiserFS, fast but after its main designer went to jail for killing his wife, the project has languished and then there is Btrfs, excellent concept but poor execution.

Some of the File systems with equally as good pedigree as NT are EXTx FS and XFS and are tried and trusted...or even more so but that is dependant on your work environment. There is of course the Google FS that can handle massive data...is working in conjunction with ZFS

There are a bunch of other file systems but I have heard nothing about them so they may be technically be dead or only used on specific equipment and may be an excellent work-horse.

One high end file systems is the Hammer FS, currently being used and developed under Free BSD. 

Probably the most popular and powerful file systems is ZFS. What it can do is incredible. It can take 10K computers and make them appear as one single drive. Most of the big Cloud and data systems use this product. AWS, Google, Facebook etc...and all the big super computers. It does auto duplication and file maintenance, self-healing, auto-defragmentation, re-built crashed hard drives by just pulling out the failed drive(s) and putting in new ones. It is similar to a hardware RAID but can extend far larger. It has the capability of managing a zetabyte (1 GB to the 12th power) data. If it wasn't that there is a bit of over-head and naturally complexity, I may have installed it on my own systems....I may yet but not until I have fully read up about the product. If you wish to research the FS in further detail check out the following book:

https://www.michaelwlucas.com/os/fmzfs

It is about using ZFS on BSD but the implementation is identical on most modern systems. 

Coming down the pipe are some new super parallel processing systems. OrangeFS is just such a system and supposedly the heir-apparent to most of our current file systems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OrangeFS

The OrangeFS support is already built into Linux version 4.6 and greater as the Linux kernel developers are so confident of its future. It has many of the feature now standardised in ZFS type networks plus many other advancements: http://www.orangefs.org/ Similar file systems will be the next generation. (It even has windows clients 32 and 64 bit so if anyone wishes to upgrade or just test out OrangeFS they can.)

Aside: It should be noted that NTFS partitions can be read from and written to by Windows and Linux systems, so there is no incompatibility issues. I personally use both NTFS and Ext4FS, on my network and they work great together. Both of the latest FS versions use Journaling and therefore can recover from all be the most serious errors. Have never had any problems with either...that could not be blamed on failing hardware. The limitation of Ext4FS is that a partition can not exceed 50TB but it can have thousands of partitions and the limitations of NT 3.5 FS is that a partition can not exceed an Exabyte. Both limits are unlikely to be reached for a few years. ;-) Linux can read and write to many file systems but I think NTFS is limited to one (...two?) The NTFS 4.0 may resolve that (...as NTFS can not even speak to the MS XBox as it uses some version of a Linux FS) but many file system designers have compatibility software clients available.

So in summary is NTFS a good file system? Of course it is but it is just one of dozens of excellent file systems out there. 

Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Brawley" <peter.brawley at earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2017 11:14:31 PM
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Microsoft or Linux

On 5/28/2017 1:06, Jim Lawrence wrote:
> Hi Peter:
>
> What does the NTFS bring to the table?

Much larger file & volume size limits, less corruption prone, both are 
big issues for DB work.

PB