IBM developerWorks: Introducing XFS Filesystem

[Warren Togami]

  http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs9.html

  "In this article, we'll take a look at XFS, SGI's free, 64-bit
high-performance filesystem for Linux. First, I'll explain how XFS compares
to ext3 and ReiserFS, and describe many of the technologies that XFS uses
internally, Then in the next article, I'll guide you through the process of
setting up XFS on your own system, as well as cover XFS tuning tips and
useful XFS features like ACL (access control lists) and extended attribute
support.
  XFS was originally developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. back in the early
90s. At that time, SGI found that their existing filesystem (EFS) was
quickly becoming unsuitable for tackling the extreme computing challenges of
the day. Addressing this problem, SGI decided to design a completely new
high-performance 64-bit filesystem rather than attempting to tweak EFS to do
something that it was never designed to do. Thus, XFS was born, and was made
available to the computing public with the release of IRIX 5.3 in 1994. To
this day, it continues to be used as the underlying filesystem for all of
SGI's IRIX-based products, from workstations to supercomputers. And now, XFS
is also available for Linux. The arrival of XFS for Linux is exciting,
primarily because it provides the Linux community with a robust, refined,
and very feature-rich filesystem that's capable of scaling to meet the
toughest storage challenges.

  Up until now, choosing the appropriate next-generation Linux filesystem
has been refreshingly straightforward. Those who were looking for raw
performance generally leaned towards ReiserFS, while those more interested
in meticulous data integrity features preferred ext3. However, with the
release of XFS for Linux, things have suddenly become much more confusing.
In particular, it's no longer clear that ReiserFS is still the next-gen
performance leader."

  (continued in article)