SLES 11 - Filesystemtype recommendations (on VMware)

[stefan_koehler]

Hello guys,

SLES 11 gives you the opportunity to choose from several filesystem types.

I am planning to setup some test cases for I/O performance measurement on SLES 11 (on VMware).

We are also running oracle databases on these servers so it's time to choose the right filesystem type for that.

I have already searched for some performance comparisons and only found this one on Oracle 9i:

[Document Oracle 9i - Linux Filesystems|http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/pdf/Linux-FS-Performance-Comparison.pdf]

The basic conditions are:

• Oracle 10gR2 and Oracle 11gR2

• Filesize up to 20 GB

• Async I/O or maybe Direct I/O (need to figure it out) ... Concurrent I/O is not available on Linux AFAIK

• SAN storage (IBM DS8000) on which the filesystems will be located

• SLES 11 on VMware ESX 4

Is there any suggestion by SAP which filesystem type should be used?

Any performance measurement by SAP?

Thanks and Regards

Stefan

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

> Is there any suggestion by SAP which filesystem type should be used?

> Any performance measurement by SAP?

Oracle develops and tests on ext3, here you can use "filesystemio_options=setall".

Check

Note 1114181 - Oracle database, SuSE/Novell Linux, file system and I/O type

Note 999524 - Oracle 10.2 platform support for Async IO

Markus

[stefan_koehler · Accepted solution]

Hello Markus,

thanks for your reply. So the recommendation is to use EXT2 or EXT3.

In combination with sapnote #1114181 - it also explains why Oracle only choose these filesystems in their Oracle 9i performance comparsion paper.

Until now we run ReiserFS on SLES10, because of it was the standard by SuSE and running well.

Now i will give EXT2/EXT3 a try on SLES 11.

Thanks and Regards

Stefan

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

ReiserFS works as well if mounted with "-notail":

Note 914177 - File system reiserfs Oracle parameter filesystemio_options

Markus

[stefan_koehler · Accepted solution]

Hello Markus,

> ReiserFS works as well if mounted with "-notail":

Yes, of course. We also set this option from the beginning on SLES 10 and it works.

The questions would be:

• Which filesystem is faster for big files (up to 20 GB of each data file)?

• Which filesystem is faster with aysnc/direct or concurrent I/O?

But as you already pointed out that Oracle chooses ext2, ext3 und OCFS2 NAS NFS for their tests .. it's hard to find such a performance comparsion with ReiserFS, etc.

Regards

Stefan

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

> The questions would be:

> * Which filesystem is faster for big files (up to 20 GB of each data file)?

> * Which filesystem is faster with aysnc/direct or concurrent I/O?

Use no filesystem, use raw devices

Markus