N7700 and XFS??

[glotgering]

I just upgraded the firmware on my N7700 to the latest beta version to fix my BT download manager problem and I noticed that there is also a new option for XFS along with ZFS and EXT3 and wondered how well XFS works.

I email support today and this is what he said:

"At this time there is very limited information for the XFS file system support, as it is only available in firmware.

We will get back to you with more info as it becomes available.

Best Regards !"

I am using 7 x 1.5 seagate drives and want to use a file system that will enable to me to increase the size when 2TB drives come out.

What is important to me is ACL support from my windows domain, performance and support for > 8TB partitions. EXT3 cannot go beyond the 8TB limit and ZFS I understand has other issues.

The XFS file system is probably the greatest file system on the planet. It would solve the limitations with ext3 and avoid the problems with ZFS. However when I talked to tech support today he said that ZFS may not actually be in the released firmware version. I am already formatting my RAID 5 using all 7 x 1.5 drives and will do some testing this weekend. I really hope it works because if does they will leave it in for the next firmware release

[GoNz0]

most of there support are off getting drunk for the chinese new year

[glotgering]

Has anyone else tried the XFS file system? So far it seems to be much faster then EXT3 and everything seems to be working fine. Still too early to tell but so far so good. The ACL's work and I no longer have the 8TB limit that EXT3 has.

My only concern is that this file system is not supported by Thecus and it is only available in the Beta firmware.

I will keep you updated for those that are interested.

[phildog33]

Ive also just started again - with an XFS array over 7x 1.5tb Seagates

[glotgering]

Here is an update.

So far no problems at all and the performance is much better then ext3. For example on ext3 I could only copy 1TB a day now I am able to copy 1.6TB per day. I should have all my data moved in a couple more days. What I like most is now files are organized alphabetically like Windows sees it. When using my D-Link DSM-520 media player and the Media server on the Thecus with the ext3 file system all my folders where random and not in order. The other think I like about XFS is that it is much better at using the disk space. I decided to use 16KB stripe size instead of 128KB that I used with ext3 because the 16KB stripe size supports volumes upto 3 Exabytes. XFS has a way of utilizing any unused blocks and still is able to maintain excellent performance.

Read this about sparse files
XFS provides a 64-bit sparse address space for each file, which allows both for very large file sizes, and for holes within files for which no disk space is allocated. As the file system uses an extent map for each file, the file allocation map size is kept small. Where the size of the allocation map is too large for it to be stored within the inode, the map is moved into a B+ tree which allows for rapid access to data anywhere in the 64-bit address space provided for the file.

Here is a link
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFS#Variable_block_sizes

So far very happy...I will report back to Thecus next week if all continues to go well so they will hopefully keep this file system in the next firmware release. If this file system goes production then nothing will beat the Thecus N700.

[msx8280]

glotgering,

How secure is suppoed to be in conjuction to zfs ? Why zfs is supposed to be inferior to xfs ? Is it less secire/ slower or something?
Please keep up posted about this XFS mode.

Btw, may one convert it on the fly from a previous mode (ZFS to XFS or ext3 2 XFS) without losing data ?

Do you have any info as to when this will hit a release date ?

[phildog33]

You have to delete the entire array and start from scratch.. for XFS

I did.. and im noticing big speed increase from EXT3.
- ACL also works properly now .. did not work in ZFS for me
- I get more than 8TB volume size.. so you can expand in the coming year as you like, with bigger drives

[glotgering]

Hey phildog33,

Glad it is working for you too. Have you tried to expand the RAID by at least 1%? I want to test the expand capability. BTW what stripe size did you use...just curious. If this continues to work perhaps it might be a good idea for both of us to tell Thecus so this file system can become production.

[phildog33]

i am using 128kb stripe, as I always use this one for large video files and photography editing

I deleted the old array, started from scratch, 7 hours building the array and now repopulating it.
I wont be able to expand the array until those 2TB drives come out

p

[glotgering]

so you used 100% of the drives? I only used 90% to leave some room to play with expansion and iSCSI. BTW iSCSI works fine as well on XFS. ACL's are working and I am able to assugn permissions from my AD domain.

I noticed on some other posts of yours that you were getting pretty good perfomance with EXT3 compared to XFS. I should point out that while my performance has increased by 50% it is still slower then what you experience with EXT3. One reason for this could be related to what you are copying from. I am migrating data from my 3 Lacie Ethernet RAID disks and they are not know for performance. I guess all the matters is even in my environment I have noticed a significant performance increass.

Once the data is copied I will expand my RAID by 5% and see what happens. I will post the results here.

Thanks for taking the plunge with me and F.Y.I the reason I never tried ZFS was entirely based on your earlier posts.

[glotgering]

glotgering,

How secure is suppoed to be in conjuction to zfs ? Why zfs is supposed to be inferior to xfs ? Is it less secire/ slower or something?
Please keep up posted about this XFS mode.

Btw, may one convert it on the fly from a previous mode (ZFS to XFS or ext3 2 XFS) without losing data ?

Do you have any info as to when this will hit a release date ?

There is some good info here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems


In short XFS has been around 10 years longer then ZFS and many consider XFS much better then ZFS
http://feedblog.org/2007/02/17/xfs-vs-zfs/
http://ma.tt/2007/02/xfs-vs-zfs/

To answer your questions:
Yes ZFS is slower then XFS
No you cannot convert on the fly you have reformat the RAID with XFS
No I do not have any info as to when the will release XFS but you can get it by downloading the beta firmware here http://www.thecus.com/news_contentx.php?nid=834

I do know the reason Thecus is looking at XFS is because there have been problems reported with ZFS and they want to have a file system that supports ACL's and has not volume size limitiation.

Good luck in your decision.

[msx8280]

Yvon,

Is there any official announcement about this new XFS mode and how much better is it over ZFS ?
Any release dates ?

[phildog33]

ive been using it for a few days now and very happy
p

[glotgering]

ive been using it for a few days now and very happy
p

I concur and have also been using it for a few days and still no problems. I like it much better then EXT3

[RainerStratmann]

I concur and have also been using it for a few days and still no problems. I like it much better then EXT3

NFS, FTP and Samba are working properly?????

thanks for answering?

Rainer

[glotgering]

To be honest I have tested Samba and NFS but yes to the FTP. I have an ubuntu virtual computer that I am planning on doing some testing on. Perhaps I will test it this weekend. I will let you know when I have tested it.

Thanks