[Dovecot] XFS vs EXT4 for mail storage

lst_hoe02 at kwsoft.de lst_hoe02 at kwsoft.de
Thu May 2 16:12:36 EEST 2013


Zitat von Charles Marcus <CMarcus at media-brokers.com>:

> Hello,
>
> I'm in the process of finalizing the spec for my new dovecot VM, and  
> this is the last question I need to address...
>
> I've read until I'm just about decided on XFS, but I have no  
> experience with it (been using reiserfs on my old box (@ 8 yrs old  
> now), and never had a problem (knock on wood), but considering its  
> current situation (little to no development support for reasons  
> everyone is aware of), I've decided now is the time to switch. It  
> came down to XFS or EXT4, and I like what I've read about XFS, but  
> am unsure how to tune it (or even if I should).
>
> I've decided to use mdbox for storage (been using maildir), and will  
> enable SIS for attachments.
>
> So, anyone (Stan?) have any suggestions? Should I go with EXT4? Or  
> XFS with just the defaults? Or XFS with one or more tuned parameters?
>
> Appreciate any suggestions (including links to docs dealing with  
> tuning XFS for my mail storage conditions that are written more at  
> the layman level) or comments from anyone experienced using both...

IMHO if you say "VM" than the filesystem inside the guest doesn't  
matter that much. The difference of ext4/xfs are mostly the knowledge  
and adjustability for special (high-end) hardware and the like. With a  
Hypervisor providing some standard I/O channel and hiding/handling the  
hardware details itself, most of the differences are gone. With this  
in mind your question should maybe more of "what filesystem is more  
Hypervisor friendly". For this i would suspect the simpler the better,  
so i would choose ext4.

Regards

Andreas


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