1,4TB share for video editing via nfs --> which filesystem?

tarand · n00b Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 9

Hello!

STORY:

a friend of mine is professionally editing video. Before he got an Apple Powermac G5 Dual 2.7GHz for video editing he had a PC with 1,4 TB of internal storage with an icp vortex SATA Raid Controller in RAID5 mode and a Lacie 1TB external Storage in RAID5 mode. Now he uses the Lacie external storage over Firewire 800 with the Powermac. Unfortunately this amount of storage is much too low, so he uses his old video editing Windows PC with the internal storage as a share over a 1gbit ehternet pipeline. Unfortunately he has not enough money to buy an external storage solution which he can connect over Fibrechannel (because of placing it in a server room), so we decided to create a gentoo server with the 1,4TB of storage to get a share for the powermac over a 1gbit ethernet pipeline. We decided to use a NFS Share for this action.

NOW THE QUESTIONS:

We need a Filesystem which is stable and does not lose data. We also need Perfomance to operate at full capacity.
I know some filesystems, which we could use, but it's very difficult to verify the advantages and disadvantages of them for chosing one of them.
I am asking for opinions and facts. There are ReiserFS3.x, JFS and XFS, which may be suitable for the requirements. Is there somebody who can give an advice? It would be very helpfull.

It would also be very helpfull, if somebody knows, in which other forum i can post this thread.

Thanks a lot!

Yours Tarand

nephros · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:19 pm Post subject:

I am by no means an expert, but I definitely would rule out reiserfs.
That's good for lots of small files but it's not exactly tailored at lage files which video editing usually deals with.

My not-really-educated choice would be XFS, it's known for its performance, and its journalling ensures some data integrity, but it is vulnerable to things like power outages due to its aggressive caching.
Also, XFS is from SGI/IRIX, which used to be _the_ specialist for unix-based multimedia solutions for a very long time so I believe this would be the best choice.

I have no expierience with JFS, but its definitely an option. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
The same applies to ext3 -- can't go wrong with that.

There's the infamousfilesystem choice thread which I think will be able to help you.
_________________
Please put [SOLVED] in your topic if you are a moron.

linuxtuxhellsinki · l33t Joined: 15 Nov 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hellsinki

I've readed one article where XFS & JFS were best ones (& ext3) with big files, which that video editing would be.

& one thing from real life that I can say is that when I've overwritten lot's a drives from big companies at work. They were on 2m x 0.80 SAN racks about 64 drives per rack, and one thing I've noticed that they were all formatted to XFS.
I don't know is it saying anything else but that supposed to be reliable filesystem :?:

_________________
1st use 'Search' & lastly add [Solved] to
the subject of your first post in the thread.

nephros · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:51 pm Post subject:

linuxtuxhellsinki · l33t Joined: 15 Nov 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hellsinki

You're right :!:

Those were mostly used with Digital's Alpha Servers & there's also some cache modules on the rack (& fibre for communication). And it also could be some licencing issue with the fs :?:

_________________
1st use 'Search' & lastly add [Solved] to
the subject of your first post in the thread.

tarand · n00b Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 9

Thanks a lot...

Yes, dedicated hardware may be the solution, but not yet. So we just wanted to buy a Asus PSCH-L Mainboard, plug in the ICP Vortex Raid Controller (often used in Servers fromm HP IBM etc), 512 MB DDR400 RAM and a DVD-Rom... that's it.

We also have a uninterruptible power supply, but it's only hardware... it can have failures ;-)

I think i will use XFS. I simply will test the two filesystems... first reiserfs, second xfs... i think because of the extreme caching feature of the xfs, we first will test reiserfs for performance.

Thanks a lot!!! Very nice Community!
If there are some additional hints or tricks... please let me know...

brot · Guru Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 322

In my opinion more ram would do very good, especially for xfs.

Asus products are generally very very reliable. I havnt had one crash since i own my A7N8X-E.

The only thing which annoys me with xfs is, that it isnt checked. the "fsck.xfs" does nothing. So if you want to check your fs, you will have to unmount it manually and then check it.

linuxtuxhellsinki · l33t Joined: 15 Nov 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hellsinki

nmcsween · Guru Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 381

XFS. It was made for what your doing.
_________________
Great Resources

Fluid Portage