[Beowulf] OS for 64 bit AMD

[Guy Coates]

> > >
> > > XFS has dump/restore programs that actually work,
> >
> > What exactly does this mean?


Dump reads straight from the filesystem block device, without making sure
the buffer cache is synced.

>From the dump/restore FAQ

http://dump.sourceforge.net/isdumpdeprecated.html

"What is the problem when dumping live filesystems?
<snip>
Thus, when dump reads the filesystem through the block device, it will
get corrupted versions of some files if there are pending write
operations;  even worse, the metadata (filesystem structure) could be
corrupt, in which case (a part of) the filesystem could become entirely
unreadable."

That doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence in the integrity of my
backups.


As Joe and others have pointed out, XFS is faster and more scalable for
real workloads. In our case it is mysql, oracle and blast, and they
really go significantly faster on XFS than on ext3. We are not using XFS
to show how clever we are; we use it because it gets the job done with the
least amount of grief.

Cheers,

Guy

-- 
Dr. Guy Coates,  Informatics System Group
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1223 834244 ex 7199