Google Switching To EXT4 Filesystem 348
An anonymous reader writes "Google is in the process of upgrading their existing EXT2 filesystem to the new and improved EXT4 filesystem. Google has benchmarked three different filesystems — XFS, EXT4 and JFS. In their benchmarking, EXT4 and XFS performed equally well. However, in view of the easier upgrade path from EXT2 to EXT4, Google has decided to go ahead with EXT4."
Not A Nerd? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I RTFA or anything, but I find it interesting that XFS and EXT4 both appear to be equally impressive with benchmarks, and it's implied they are both better than JFS. You must not be a nerd.
Re:Time for a backup? (Score:2, Insightful)
Still on ext2 on servers (Score:4, Insightful)
We are still using ext2 on servers. Now I have an argument; if Google is still using ext2 maybe we aren't so foolish. We might update some day but it is not yet a priority. With UPS and proper fail over and backup procedure in place, I can't remember when a jounaling file system would have helped us in any way. They seem great for desktops/laptops although.
Re:No ReiserFS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Use of commas. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do I put a comma before the and in a list?
I would say "I have a cat, a dog, and two goats."
But you would say "I have a cat, a dog and two goats." (Then you'd bugger the goats, but that's how you roll.)
The English language is so damned weird...but AC is right, illegal use of commas. That's a 15 karma penalty. 1st down.
GFS (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought google had their own file system named the google files system.
http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html [google.com]
Re:Btrfs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GFS (Score:2, Insightful)
I should probably read my own posts before hitting submit.
Re:Time for a backup? (Score:3, Insightful)
"backups are never a bad idea."
Depends, for example you reduce the security of data with the number of backups you keep (you could encrypt them but that has it's own problems).
Re:Time for a backup? (Score:2, Insightful)
True, but they do make money off of your data. I'm pretty sure they will go to great lengths to protect their source of revenue.
Re:Windows Driver (Score:5, Insightful)
To the best of my knowledge, Google uses pretty much no Windows servers themselves(at least not for any of their public facing products, they almost certainly have some kicking around) and "a vast number of instances of custom in-house server applications" is among the least plausible environments for a Windows server deployment, so that is unlikely to change.
On the desktop side, Google has a bunch of stuff that runs on Windows; but it all communicates with Google's servers over various ordinary web protocols and stores local files with the OS provided filesystem. The benefits of EXT4 on Windows would have to be pretty damn compelling for them to start requiring a kernel driver install and a spare unformatted partition.
I suppose it is conceivable that some Google employee might decide to do it, for more or less inscrutable reasons; but it would have no connection at all to Google's broader operation or strategy.
Re:Time for a backup? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Google is actually still using ext2 rather than ext3, ext4 will be significantly *more* reliable.
It ain't the destination, it's the journey that worries me.
Re:Ubuntu 9.10? (Score:5, Insightful)
He probably knows a lot about it.
Re:Ubuntu 9.10? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ubuntu makes no sense for a company with Google's size, resources, and needs
Re:Google doesn't need journaling? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's always a rather curious occurrence to me when, in times when one is complaining about specific instances of text which are lacking brevity, the prose that the complainant themselves produce uses "it is" instead of "it's."
Re:No ReiserFS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not A Nerd? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called Nepomuk, you'll find it in KDE4.
The big problem with tagging is that it is essentially useless since you are going to have to tag every file yourself. Nepomuk scrapes text documents and even code files but music/video/photos will just get you the filename, the contents of the EXIF/ID3 tags and that's it. No-one has that sort of patience, at least, if they have any sort of sizable collection.