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Google Switching To EXT4 Filesystem
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."
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
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.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Oh fuck off. It's not like Google is going to upgrade their entire multiply-redundant infrastructure all at once. And ext4 is a very conservative and stable FS. The "upgrade" process is to simply mount your old ext3 volume as ext4, and let new writes take advantage of ext4 features. If Google is actually still using ext2 rather than ext3, ext4 will be significantly *more* reliable. Not as good as XFS for preserving data integrity, but better than ext2.
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.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
...or maybe the fact that he's no longer involved brings up questions about its future direction. I'm sure they took a look at reiserfs previously
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
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.
Sent from your iPad.
I thought google had their own file system named the google files system.
http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html
The chances of them using it would be pretty much nil. They are switching from ext2, and ext4's been "done" for over a year now. I'm sure they have a few benchmarks of btrfs, just not on as large of a scale as these tests were.
"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).
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
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.
I can't imagine why it would.
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.
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.
They employ the main developer of ext2, ext3 and ext4.
He probably knows a lot about it.
New things are always on the horizon
Ubuntu makes no sense for a company with Google's size, resources, and needs
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
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."
Kid-proof tablet..
They've never hired anyone from the Windows ME team though, only people who did the sort of everyday low-grade evil, nothing too heinous.
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