Am 15.09.2023 um 17:23 schrieb Bill Cunningham <bill.cu1234@xxxxxxxxx>:WHat is the reason Peter behind xfs being used on the server edition and btrfs on the workstation? I pretty much stick with ext3. I don't even use ext4 really. I've never used xfs.It is basically about data protection, performances, reliability and easy administration (see https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/server-working-group/docs/server-technical-specification/) So, the Fedora server editions (i.e. Server and CoreOS) use LVM/xfs. And please, think twice when you read something like "BTRFS protects us from "silent" corruption of files, which is more of an issue with large volumes of data“ or „... large organizations with many users, btrfs is expected to reduce problems with data corruption…“. It’s more kind of marketing speech than any valid decision criteria or technically based argument. If you use the search engine of your preference you will find a lot of detailed and and technically based discussions of Fedora and Red Hat engineers about the topic. As in most cases, there is no „one absolute truth“ about filesystems as many missionaries claim again and again. It is a question of weighing and criteria for a use case or also for a type of use cases.
Umm, no.
Fedora server uses LVM because that's what most people have
upgraded from. It adds another data layer to the i/o stack,
increasing on-disk complexity. It is normally required under XFS
to provide the missing pieces like RAID levels and snapshots, as
XFS was designed in the 70s with hardware RAID in use. Its also
what most sysadmins were trained to use, and its hard to change
old habits. Its solid, but really old tech that BTRFS and ZFS can
almost always do better. Unlike LVM, RAID-5/6 is currently a
problem for BTRFS, as it has the write-hole bug that almost all
hardware and software implementations also have with the exception
of ZFS. Disks are really cheap, so 2 or 3-way mirroring or RAID-1
are currently the ways to go on BTRFS. It should be noted that
imho the RAID-Z levels on ZFS are superior to all other solutions
for reliable data preservation and performance.
Fedora server uses XFS because that's what RHEL and therefore the
certified sysadmins use. Consumer disks are actually more
reliable than enterprise disks, but stall for very long periods
when re-reading failing sectors. So, BTRFS actually works better
on enterprise disks, as the stall is far smaller. It is probably
the #3 or 4 filesystem around for performance and reliability, but
managing it is positively arcane. There are a number of normal
admin operations that are very difficult using XFS, such as
shrinking a filesystem (even by a couple of sectors to use a
replacement disk). It also does no runtime error
detection/correction of your data, so you depend upon RAID
hardware or LVM to do that for you. If you get an error detected
during one of these repair sweeps, recovery is usually no better
than an uncorrectable multi-bit BTRFS or ZFS failure. Putting XFS
on a single disk is very questionable as a result.
Fedora desktop uses BTRFS by default for a number of really good reasons. BTRFS detects bit-rot on the fly. With mirrored or RAIDed disks it can also correct that bit-rot on the fly. XFS cannot do that, and requires weekly error detection work. Putting ZFS or BTRFS on RAID hardware actually makes everything slower, as they do a better, faster and more reliable job in software. BTRFS and ZFS also have many operational advantages, like much faster migrations, near-instantaneous snapshotting and rollback (LVM takes hours to do the same), and much faster off-machine backups.
While ZFS is the gold standard for reliable filesystems, with the
exception of the Ubuntu and Oracle platforms, it cannot be used
without paying Oracle lots of money. BTRFS reimplements much of
ZFS in a legally unencumbered codebase. It is unclear why Fedora
has not moved server installs to BTRFS by default, as the
advantages in complexity, training and data reliability are huge.
Those all make a BTRFS or ZFS server cheaper to operate, sometimes
by a considerable margin. I know all the RHEL sysadmin people
will come out of the woodwork and start shouting about that
statement, but just maybe they are incorrect. YMMV of course.
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