Filesystem for High-load Webserver?

HydroSan

I'm trying to help a friend set up a Linux box for a high-load webserver. By 'high load', I mean around 500,000 hits a day, with tons of high-resolution images and music streams.

Now, my friend is looking at any flavour of Linux, and is trying to get the server off of Windows 2003, as we both agree'd Apache probably isn't as secure on it as it could be on Windows. Currently we're looking towards Debian. But we want to make sure that the filesystem we use is stable, wont get corrupted and can handle the high load. This will most likely be on a RAID-0 as well.

We've basically narrowed it down to XFS, ReiserFS, and JFS. I have no expeirence with JFS, but if you have any experience, please do say if it is better or handles some things better than XFS or ReiserFS.

From what I can tell ReiserFS is good for smaller files under 100KB and is generally fast. XFS is better for files above 100KB and is faster at larger files, which the server will most likely be in use for. (500KB+ images, up to 5000KB+ images and music, with room to expand.) I have no experience with JFS.

Can someone suggest a filesystem, and give a few good reasons why? We wont be using Reiser4, either. :lol:

_________________
I was a Gangster for Capitalism, by Major General Smedley Butler.

Server status: Currently down, being replaced with fresh install - 20% completed.

exeter · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2004 Posts: 189

I think I would go with XFS here, because XFS is designed as a server file system. Basically it caches very aggressively to increase throughput. I assume that since this is a production server type environment, you will have a UPS.... The reason I say that is because XFS caches so aggressively, it can easily get b0rked if you lose power.

Janne Pikkarainen · Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:04 am Post subject:

If you really want a reliable system, I think you might want to reconsider that RAID-0 part. It sure gives you a nice speed boost, but that comes with a considerable risk: one dead drive means a dead RAID array.

What kind of drives does your server have? A bunch of new SCSI drives (in RAID-1/RAID-5/RAID-10 mode) and enough physical RAM _should_ provide you enough performance for most situations. In fact, RAID-0 + not-too-much-RAM would probably be slower in real world than what-ever-RAID-level + plenty-of-physical-RAM combination. If you can put 2/4 gigabytes of RAM or even more to your server, do it. XFS is fast for your purpose, but when it has enough RAM to play with, it becomes even faster.
_________________
Yes, I'm the man. Now it's your turn to decide if I meant "Yes, I'm the male." or "Yes, I am the Unix Manual Page.".

nobspangle · Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:41 am Post subject:

I agree with Janne, RAID 0 is good for scratch disks and swap disks, but nothing else (it's just too risky) I'd go with RAID5 or, if you've got the physical space for the disks, RAID10
Then stick in as much RAM as you can afford/system can take make sure you have plenty of RAM on the RAID controller as well.

On the filesystem note looks like XFS is the one to go for, although I'd like to see anybodys comments on JFS.

HydroSan · Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:45 pm Post subject:

The RAID-0 Idea was scrapped by my friend soon after showing the topic. :lol:

Though it seems XFS would be the way to go for the /var/www partition.
_________________
I was a Gangster for Capitalism, by Major General Smedley Butler.

Server status: Currently down, being replaced with fresh install - 20% completed.

pmjdebruijn · Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 3:55 pm Post subject:

Well I have XFS running on my home ftp server, and it does fine... performs great...

Note, I did some stress testing of XFS myself... By turning off the power of the system at random times... I never lost anything... I even pulled the plug once while the system was defragmenting... Everything was just fine...

Note, XFS can be defragmented... This might be nice in the long run!

I have JFS running on my gameserver... and it works great too.... No problem yet... But I installed it only a few days ago...

Regards,
Pascal de Bruijn

waverider202 · Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 3:40 pm Post subject: file loss

I have had some file loss from XFS, but thats from loosing power while writing that file. Any FS will loose that file. The key idea is while 'writing'. Webserver's tend not to write a lot, so you won't have any issues.
_________________
:-P

kashani · Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:42 pm Post subject:

Choice of filesystem is going to such a minute part of your total performance that I'd just use ext3 and use the time to saved to put in some overtime to get faster disks or think longer about my db schema. The big performace issues are:

1. how much content do you have? Will it fit into RAM?
2. how many of your pages are dynamically generated? Can you cache any of your db hits or the pages themselves.
3. How fast are you disks?
4. How fast is your db?

A webserver can generate significant writes to the disks because of logging. You may notice that it's easier to dedicate a drive to logging/OS and one to content or some mismatch of raid0/5 etc.

kashani
_________________
Will personally fix your server in exchange for motorcycle related shop tools in good shape.

pmjdebruijn · Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:24 pm Post subject:

You might want to take a look at this if you want to run php:

http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/index_old.html

Regards,
Pascal de Bruijn