Brian, Info, supporting your remark about VFS layer: I did a reboot of cluster headnode and after that the remove was „fast“ meanig the typical millsecond /single file to seconds / removal of whole trees. What does your intuition say, what could be suspected in the VFS layer / lvm2 layer or below to trigger this problem ( just to collect ideas, where to search). ? Caused by the fact, that the problem was seen also two times before, the issue will reappear after some time. Off topic: is the mount option delaylog still functional or obsoleted, because already default behaviour ? best Micha thx for extremely friendly help