XFS To Enjoy Big Scalability Boost With Linux 5.14

[coder]

Those charts basically confirm my picking of ZFS due to its features.

BTRFS has all of the features I need, and it's a native (i.e. in-tree) filesystem. Also, it's the default filesystem used by some popular distros, making it probably the 2nd widest-used Linux filesystem, today. That translates into better support and reliability.

[curfew]

Bcachefs has been dead for a long time? No news for half a year now?

[ermo]

Bcachefs has been dead for a long time? No news for half a year now?

Looking at the commit log in https://evilpiepirate.org/git/bcachefs.git/log/ (there's a link to the git repo on https://bcachefs.org/ ) I'm not quite sure how you reached that conclusion?

[cynic]

I wonder if BTRFS can have subvolume-specific quotas. That would give you a similar capability.

btrfs had subvolume quotas since the beginning. It has, however, some severe performance implications, so it is often suggested not to use that feature.

[jabl]

One unique feature I love is project quotas, aka limiting the size that a directory can take

ext4 also supports project quotas.

[Linuxxx]

On ext4 vs xfs, I have long since preferred xfs. Its adequately fast and doesn't leave lost+found directories around. However it cannot be shrunk.

Another benefit XFS has over EXT4 is that it doesn't reserve 5% of disk space by default!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ext4#Reserved_blocks

And then you have clueless Linux users complaining that 100 GB of space is simply missing on their shiny-new 2 TB NVMe SSD...

[waxhead]

Does anyone know for which workloads XFS is especially suitable/viable in comparison to ext4?

What Dave Chinner him-selves advocates is that 'if you got lots or large' you need XFS. The bottom line is scale-ability. XFS shines when you scale, e.g. when you throw a beehive of processes on it reading/writing at the same time, creating lots of files etc... but as with all filesystem no matter if it is ext*, xfs, btrfs, zfs, fat, plain pen and paper - if you don't have tested, working backups sooner or later somethings gonna knock your nuts out your nostrils.

[skeevy420]

BTRFS has all of the features I need, and it's a native (i.e. in-tree) filesystem. Also, it's the default filesystem used by some popular distros, making it probably the 2nd widest-used Linux filesystem, today. That translates into better support and reliability.

BTRFS is the only Linux file system that has ever failed me, failed to boot, lost my data, etc. Not once, but three times in the past 10 years. While it's being used for my current root I wouldn't be surprised if a kernel update screwed me over a fourth time. Every time I read about kernel and BTRFS updates I get nervous. It's due to using Arch. When you're on the edge sometimes you fall and get hurt.

ZFS, OTOH, has been used for my data disks for 7 years and has never failed me. My only issues have been times when I updated the kernel and forgot to check what ZoL was compatible with. Booting into the previous kernel is usually good enough, though sometimes I'll build ZoL from git if the kernel brings in some AMDGPU goodness. While it has never lost my data, it can be a pain in the ass to use as root. For a non-root data disk, ZFS is the best file system around. It only has 14, 15 years of proven reliability (8 for ZoL).

[kbios]

ext4 also supports project quotas.

Yep, but it's a relatively recent feature. When I set up my server xfs was the only option

[waxhead]

BTRFS is the only Linux file system that has ever failed me, failed to boot, lost my data, etc. Not once, but three times in the past 10 years. While it's being used for my current root I wouldn't be surprised if a kernel update screwed me over a fourth time. Every time I read about kernel and BTRFS updates I get nervous. It's due to using Arch. When you're on the edge sometimes you fall and get hurt.

ZFS, OTOH, has been used for my data disks for 7 years and has never failed me. My only issues have been times when I updated the kernel and forgot to check what ZoL was compatible with. Booting into the previous kernel is usually good enough, though sometimes I'll build ZoL from git if the kernel brings in some AMDGPU goodness. While it has never lost my data, it can be a pain in the ass to use as root. For a non-root data disk, ZFS is the best file system around. It only has 14, 15 years of proven reliability (8 for ZoL).

I am not saying that this applies to you , but failure to boot is usually not BTRFS' fault or even GRUBs fault. It is usually caused by turning on feature that GRUB does not (yet) support. Many (including me) have done that mistake.

Regarding dataloss, I have never (even with the nasty kernel 5.2 bug) lost data on a BTRFS filesystem providing that you of course have two copies of your metadata and preferably your data as well. Granted BTRFS is sensitive to data corruption if you only have a single copy of metadata, it usually turns read only which - when you think about it - is often preferable to non-checksumming filesystem behavior.

It all depends if you are willing to let a minor corruption slide by (and let's be frank - most times people do not even notice) or if you (like me) are nuts about keeping your data consistent. My experience on Debian (testing) has been a smooth ride for years.

I will however choose XFS if I want to run some VM's or process tons of files quickly as BTRFS is not yet optimized for that kind of work. When BTRFS learn to distribute reads across disk in raid1c4 it might be a different story