XFS features advanced journaling, full 64-bit addressing, and scalable structures and algorithms to provide reliable file system management for large-scale systems.
XFS is a high-performance filesystem that combines advanced journaling technology with full 64-bit addressing and scalable structures and algorithms. The result is the most scalable filesystem ever created. One of the key features of "xfsprogs" is quick recovery. Thanks to the XFS journaling technology, it can restart quickly after an unexpected interruption, regardless of the number of files it is managing. Traditional filesystems require special checks after an interruption, which can take hours to complete. The XFS journaling avoids such delays.
XFS also delivers fast transactions while minimizing the impact of journaling on read and write data transactions. Its journaling structures and algorithms are optimized to log the transactions promptly. XFS uses efficient tree structures for rapid searches and space allocation. Even for directories with tens of thousands of entries, XFS continues to deliver quick response times.
Another impressive feature is massive scalability. As a full 64-bit filesystem, XFS can handle filesystems up to a million terabytes, which is thousands of times larger than most large filesystems in use today. This is necessary to accommodate the exponential disk density improvements witnessed in the storage industry in recent years. XFS is already equipped with the technologies required for this scalability.
Efficiency when dealing with large amounts of main memory and cached file data is another area of active development for XFS. The goal is to match the capabilities of the hardware it's being deployed on. The filesystem is renowned for its efficient space management techniques that make use of variable sized extents instead of the simple single-block-at-a-time mechanism of many other filesystems. XFS was also the first filesystem to implement delayed space allocation for buffered writes, supports direct I/O, and provides an optional realtime allocator.
Finally, XFS delivers excellent bandwidth, capable of providing very close to the raw I/O performance that the underlying hardware can provide. The filesystem has shown scalability on SGI Altix systems of multiple gigabytes-per-second on multiple terabyte filesystems. With XFS, users can rest assured that their data is safe and their system is running efficiently.
XFS also delivers fast transactions while minimizing the impact of journaling on read and write data transactions. Its journaling structures and algorithms are optimized to log the transactions promptly. XFS uses efficient tree structures for rapid searches and space allocation. Even for directories with tens of thousands of entries, XFS continues to deliver quick response times.
Another impressive feature is massive scalability. As a full 64-bit filesystem, XFS can handle filesystems up to a million terabytes, which is thousands of times larger than most large filesystems in use today. This is necessary to accommodate the exponential disk density improvements witnessed in the storage industry in recent years. XFS is already equipped with the technologies required for this scalability.
Efficiency when dealing with large amounts of main memory and cached file data is another area of active development for XFS. The goal is to match the capabilities of the hardware it's being deployed on. The filesystem is renowned for its efficient space management techniques that make use of variable sized extents instead of the simple single-block-at-a-time mechanism of many other filesystems. XFS was also the first filesystem to implement delayed space allocation for buffered writes, supports direct I/O, and provides an optional realtime allocator.
Finally, XFS delivers excellent bandwidth, capable of providing very close to the raw I/O performance that the underlying hardware can provide. The filesystem has shown scalability on SGI Altix systems of multiple gigabytes-per-second on multiple terabyte filesystems. With XFS, users can rest assured that their data is safe and their system is running efficiently.
What's New
Version 3.0.5: N/A