PERFORMANCE OF FILESYSTEMS COMPARED (includes Reiser4 and Ext4).

[Jade]

PERFORMANCE OF FILESYSTEMS COMPARED
(includes Reiser4 and Ext4)

http://linuxhelp.150m.com/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm

http://linux.50webs.org/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm

RESULT: With compression, REISER4, absolutely SMASHED the other filesystems.

No other filesystem came close (not even remotely close).

Using REISER4 (gzip), rather than EXT2/3/4, saves you a truly amazing 816 - 213 = 603 MB (a 74% saving in disk space), and this, with little, or no, loss of performance when storing 655 MB of raw data. In fact, substantial performance increases were achieved in the bonnie++ benchmarks.

We use the following filesystems:

REISER4 gzip: Reiser4 using transparent gzip compression.
REISER4 lzo: Reiser4 using transparent lzo compression.
REISER4 Standard Reiser4 (with extents)
EXT4 default Standard ext4.
EXT4 extents ext4 with extents.
NTFS3g Szabolcs Szakacsits' NTFS user-space driver.
NTFS NTFS with Windows XP driver.

Disk Usage in megabytes. Time in seconds. SMALLER is better.

.-------------------------------------------------.
|File         |Disk |Copy |Copy |Tar  |Unzip| Del |
|System       |Usage|655MB|655MB|Gzip |UnTar| 2.5 |
|Type         | (MB)| (1) | (2) |655MB|655MB| Gig |
.-------------------------------------------------.
|REISER4 gzip | 213 | 148 |  68 |  83 |  48 |  70 |
|REISER4 lzo  | 278 | 138 |  56 |  80 |  34 |  84 |
|REISER4 tails| 673 | 148 |  63 |  78 |  33 |  65 |
|REISER4      | 692 | 148 |  55 |  67 |  25 |  56 |
|NTFS3g       | 772 |1333 |1426 | 585 | 767 | 194 |
|NTFS         | 779 | 781 | 173 |   X |   X |   X |
|REISER3      | 793 | 184 |  98 |  85 |  63 |  22 |
|XFS          | 799 | 220 | 173 | 119 |  90 | 106 |
|JFS          | 806 | 228 | 202 |  95 |  97 | 127 |
|EXT4 extents | 806 | 162 |  55 |  69 |  36 |  32 |
|EXT4 default | 816 | 174 |  70 |  74 |  42 |  50 |
|EXT3         | 816 | 182 |  74 |  73 |  43 |  51 |
|EXT2         | 816 | 201 |  82 |  73 |  39 |  67 |
|FAT32        | 988 | 253 | 158 | 118 |  81 |  95 |
.-------------------------------------------------.

WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN:

The raw data (without filesystem meta-data, block alignment wastage, etc) was 655MB.
It comprised 3 different copies of the Linux kernel sources.

Disk Usage: The amount of disk used to store the data.
Copy 655MB (1): Time taken to copy the data over a partition boundary.
Copy 655MB (2): Time taken to copy the data within a partition.
Tar Gzip 655MB: Time taken to Tar and Gzip the data.
Unzip UnTar 655MB: Time taken to UnGzip and UnTar the data.
Del 2.5 Gig: Time taken to Delete everything just written (about 2.5 Gig).

Each test was preformed 5 times and the average value recorded.

To get a feel for the performance increases that can be achieved by using compression, we look at the total time (in seconds) to run the test:

bonnie++ -n128:128k:0 (bonnie++ is Version 1.93c)

.-------------------.
| FILESYSTEM | TIME |
.-------------------.
|REISER4 lzo |  1938|
|REISER4 gzip|  2295|
|REISER4     |  3462|
|EXT4        |  4408|
|EXT2        |  4092|
|JFS         |  4225|
|EXT3        |  4421|
|XFS         |  4625|
|REISER3     |  6178|
|FAT32       | 12342|
|NTFS-3g     |>10414|
.-------------------.

The top two results use Reiser4 with compression. Since bonnie++ writes test files which are almost all zeros, compression speeds things up dramatically. That this is not the case in real world examples can be seen in the first test above where compression often does not speed things up. However, more importantly, it does not slow things down much, either.

http://linuxhelp.150m.com/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm

http://m.domaindlx.com/LinuxHelp/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm

[mlau]

Very nice summary, thank you.

RESULT: With compression, REISER4, absolutely SMASHED the other filesystems.

I've been using Reiser4 since it first hit -mm series. While it really IS
very fast (no FS untars a kernel tarball faster), it has two major flaws:
1. it maintains too large in-memory caches. When it decides to write its
huge caches back to disk, my system gets unresponsive for ~5secs (even
mouse cursor freezes sometimes).
EDIT: this is also a problem with sudden power loss. I lost *LOTS* of files
on reiser4 partitions this way.

2. it does not reserve a tiny amount of diskspace for "emergency" use when
the disk gets full. This is especially annoying if you use it as rootfs:
disk gets full and you can't launch any apps (not even rm!, heck I can't
even shut the machine down properly).

[Jade]

this is also a problem with sudden power loss. I lost *LOTS* of files on reiser4 partitions this way.

I can't say the same. Apart from Morton's sabotaged Reiser4, I have never lost a file.

[mlau]

Apart from Morton's sabotaged Reiser4,

care to expand on that statement?

I ditched Reiser4 for XFS because I'm using latest -git sources nowadays; hunting down patches to get R4 working on those sources got annoying...

[Jade]

care to expand on that statement

See the comment by edged: @

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7544&page=5

and the article: "The Linux Kernel Saboteurs." @

http://linuxhelp.150m.com/jews/saboteurs.htm

[ddoan]

Come on, why do you always have to link to this damn nazi website? A website where things like "Jews are evil people" are stated. This is all so ridiculous

[yoshi314]

yeah, no wonder my spam detector feels trigger-happy.

i still prefer reliability to performance. i've had a big data corruption with reiser4 done in quite a trivial way, and i don't feeling like trying again for now.

fortunately it was non-critical data, but still the bad impression remains.

[butdie]

Very nice summary, thank you.



I've been using Reiser4 since it first hit -mm series. While it really IS
very fast (no FS untars a kernel tarball faster), it has two major flaws:
1. it maintains too large in-memory caches. When it decides to write its
huge caches back to disk, my system gets unresponsive for ~5secs (even
mouse cursor freezes sometimes).
EDIT: this is also a problem with sudden power loss. I lost *LOTS* of files
on reiser4 partitions this way.

2. it does not reserve a tiny amount of diskspace for "emergency" use when
the disk gets full. This is especially annoying if you use it as rootfs:
disk gets full and you can't launch any apps (not even rm!, heck I can't
even shut the machine down properly).

the first problem is a really trouble for me. it freezes from time to time not only for 5 seconds, but 5+ mins, or even 30 mins! the cursor still moves, but firefox would freeze. as far as I'm aware of, there's no fix yet. user may specify smaller cache, but it doesn't really improve the freezes, just slows the fs down

[Pseus]

the first problem is a really trouble for me. it freezes from time to time not only for 5 seconds, but 5+ mins, or even 30 mins! the cursor still moves, but firefox would freeze. as far as I'm aware of, there's no fix yet. user may specify smaller cache, but it doesn't really improve the freezes, just slows the fs down

It may be wise to report this to the ReiserFS development mailing list.

In any case, the benchmarks posted by the OP are somewhat old. A new set of benchmarks is needed. Unfortunately, development has been slow and I don't see reiser4 making big progress as long as there are only a couple of devs that can work on it part-time.

[BlueKoala]

Come on, why do you always have to link to this damn nazi website? A website where things like "Jews are evil people" are stated. This is all so ridiculous

lol
Some opinions are extreme and maybe hateful, although the point of view is definitely interesting (The sabotage part). In case it really is a big conspiracy, it would then be more obvious who the culprit would be when Namesys gets bought out by it once the value of the company hits rock bottom.

I'd be interested to have reiser4 in my kernel to test it with unimportant data on a seperate drive. I could live with HDD performance going through the roof, even if it doesn't conform with kernel development standards.