EXT4, Btrfs, NILFS2 Performance Compared 102
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has published Linux filesystem benchmarks comparing XFS, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems. This is the first time that the new EXT4 and Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems have been directly compared when it comes to their disk performance though the results may surprise. For the most part, EXT4 came out on top."
Btrfs (Score:5, Informative)
The version of Btrfs that they used was before their performance optimizations - 0.18. But they now have 0.19 which is supposedly a lot faster and will be in the next kernel release. There's about 5 months of development work between them:
# v0.19 Released (June 2009) For 2.6.31-rc
# v0.18 Released (Jan 2009) For 2.6.29-rc2
Another lame filesystem comment (Score:5, Informative)
Btrfs includes support for TRIM on SSD, but that's a secondary addition. The main purpose of Btrfs is to compete against Sun's ZFS in the area of robust fault tolerance. If you look at the original announcement [lkml.org], you can see SSD support wasn't on the radar at all; that's strictly been an afterthought in the design. Btrfs is absolutely designed to work on SATA drives and to compete head to head against ext3/ext4.
Re:Another lame filesystem review (Score:3, Informative)
NILFS2 and Btrfs are both TRIM file systems optimized for SSD media. Comparing them to other file systems on a SATA drive is borderline stupidity, because you would never use them on a SATA drive. Any more than comparing NILFS2 or Btrfs to eXT3 on a SSD would be.
This statement doesn't make any sense since SSDs can use both the original SATA and SATA II interfaces.
Re:Btrfs (Score:1, Informative)
bzzt
Most schemes use a zero in the first sequence to designate alpha or beta status for releases that are not stable enough for general or practical deployment and are intended for testing or internal use only. Alpha- and beta-version software is often given numerical versions less than 1 (such as 0.9), to suggest their approach toward a public "1.0" release
Yet another content-free Phoronix fluff article (Score:5, Informative)
Skip TFA - the conclusion is that these benchmarks are invalid.
At least they've improved since last time - they no longer benchmark filesystems using a Quake 3 timedemo.
Re:Btrfs (Score:3, Informative)
Alpha- and beta-version software is often given numerical versions less than 1 (such as 0.9), to suggest their approach toward a public "1.0" release
That's just your personal conception, conditioned by many years of commerical software development. Putting the '1.0' in is a totally arbitrary decision. Lots of Open Source projects are in perfectly stable, usable condition when in 0.x status. The Linux kernel itself was pretty stable in 0.9, with the only major changes between that and 1.0 being stabilizing the TCP/IP stack (IIRC).
Some projects don't even use that nomenclature; Gentoo just uses the date of release. On the opposite side of the fence, lots of commerical offerings are crud until they reach at least 3.0. Windows, for instance, was a sick joke in 1.0 and 2.0