Red Hat Has Been Working On New NVFS File-System

[curfew]

One can never have enough file systems. Unless, of course, it's called ReiserFS.

Because after ReiserFS you wouldn't need any others.

[intelfx]

is it filesystem for ssd? how is it any better than f2fs or ext4?

Can you read?

This is not a general-purpose filesystem. This is a filesystem for persistent RAM (NVDIMMs), and other DAX-capable block devices. If you don't know what that is, you don't have it.

[gregzeng]

Can you read?

This is not a general-purpose filesystem. This is a filesystem for persistent RAM (NVDIMMs), and other DAX-capable block devices. If you don't know what that is, you don't have it.

Instead of Red Hat financing another file system, there are other options. Often existing code can be modified for new or unusual hardware.
New hardware often creates other hardware changes that benefits other systems. This then moves into new & modified hardware that becomes gives new meaning to the new NVFS file system.
Surprisingly, no mention is made on how costly, rare & exotic this hardware system is. Could Samsung, IBM etc also move into using this as well?

[k1e0x]

mount | less going to be a necessary thing on redhat systems now? Toooo many mounts.

[Vistaus]

One can never have enough file systems.

And best of all: it's coming straight out of Red Hat, so it has 144Hz's seal of approval!

[angrypie]

Linux: let's have dozens of filesystems, text editors, Wayland compositors and make all of them suck.

[polarathene]

Yes, the high cost is what made them fail and become a niche product. But for years it was claimed that Optane was going to be inexpensive and supplant hard disks.

it seems that since then Optane is slowly fading away.

I can't comment much on the NVDIMM variants, but the larger capacity Optane products are still doing well afaik. They still cost more than NVMe SSDs, but outperform in latency by a longshot still iirc. Not that many consumers need or benefit from such product line though, hence price being a bit higher per GB not being too big of an issue, if you need the lower latency for certain disk workloads, it's well worth it.

[polarathene]

Apparently there is no filesystem for DAX storage devices. They are devices so fast that using Linux disk cache would actually degrade performance significantly.

Eh? Doesn't the DAX support in existing filesystems skip the linux disk cache? This NVFS is just tailored/optimized directly for such devices skipping any other overheads that were involved?

[starshipeleven]

Eh? Doesn't the DAX support in existing filesystems skip the linux disk cache?

I don't know, but I assume they do as it's not hard to disable disk cache. I just used that as an example of how different is the storage medium, that anything that would help or save time on normal storage may very well be a drag on DAX devices.

This NVFS is just tailored/optimized directly for such devices skipping any other overheads that were involved?

Yes

[DavidC1]

It's a shame that Optane failed. It sounded so promising, but evidently couldn't be fabricated economically. I've heard other theories having to do with marketing etc., but from what I've been able to glean it seems the problems were fabrication costs. And from what I've read it also appears the second generation will suffer the same fate. If I'm wrong I would welcome someone chiming in and setting me straight, as it failed so dismally there aren't even many articles about it anymore. It already seems to have been lost to the dustbin of history.

It didn't fail. It lives on well with the NVDIMMs. Last quarter Intel had its first profitable quarter for the storage division, which one analyst speculated its due to Optane reaching profitability. He indicated it needs volume is one of the greatest contributor to reaching competitive prices. Even NAND flash used to be costly to produce until it reached high enough volume.

The caching devices are dead yes. With SSDs being this cheap there's no need for them.

The fact that Red Hat is working on a filesystem dedicated to this shows there's definitely demand for this.