Filesystem selection
From Sysadmin
The question as to what filesystem to use for system and user data is often posed by system administrators, new and experienced a like. The aim of this page is to give some advice on selecting the filesystem(s) that are appropriate for a given installation. Filesystems suitable for system use on a given operating system differ principally in capabilities and performance.
Contents |
Capabilities
Performance
Other Considerations
It is very important to consider maintenance and backup strategies when selecting filesystems.
Use of Multiple Filesystems
Some users select multiple filesystems for their workstation, and sysadmins have even been known to do this for servers. In general it is undesirable to run many filesystems on one system. The justification for this practice comes from a desire to optimise the system by choosing filesystems perceived to be better for each role. In general the differences in performance between filesystems are relatively minor and often only come in to play with high performance servers.
Use of multiple filesystems means that anyone wanting to perform maintenance on the system needs to be familiar with the mainternance tools of all of the filesystems. Similarly the backup system needs to be able to backup each type of filesystem reliabily. This is not always as easy as it seems.
