[rhelv6-list] You suggestion for 'big' filesystem management Best Practice?

[Peter Ruprecht]

Götz Reinicke wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we plan to set up a big file storage for media files like uncompressed
> movies from student film projects, dvd images etc.
> 
> It should be some sort of archive and will not bee accessed by more than
> may be 5 people at the same time.
> 
> The iSCSI RAID we have is about 26TB netto and I'm again faced with the
> question: How many partitions, which filesystem, which mount options etc.
> 
> For the User it would be the most simpel thing, to have one big
> filesystem she/he could fill with all the data and dont has to search
> e.g. on multiple volumes.
> 
> On the other hand, if one big filesystem crashes or has do be checked it
> will destroy a lot of data or the check will take hours ...
> 
> 
> Any suggestions pro or cons are welcome! :-)
> 
> My favourite for now is 3 to 4 filesystems with the default ext4
> settings. (Redhat EL 5.7, may be soon 6.1)
> 
> Thanks and best regards. Götz

If you decide to go with RHEL6, xfs is a good bet for making one big 
filesystem.  We have a setup similar to what you're describing and have 
had very solid stability and performance using xfs (default filesystem 
and mount settings.)  As far as I can see (and knocking on wood), xfs is 
now a lot less flaky than it seemed to be in the past.

  -Peter