Too many dirs

["Stack Overflow" <sigsegv@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I have about 1,000,000 directories currently stored on an ext3 partition. I 
want to move data to xfs. Due to ext3 limitations I apply a directory 
hashing algorithm to place those 1M directories into other subdirectories so 
that the maximum number of inodes in a directory does not exceed 32K ( ext3 
limit ).

I know that xfs does not have this limitation , and I read that it uses 
balanced trees to organize directories, but is it better in xfs to have all 
those 1M directories in a single flat level ( I never need to ls or readdir 
them all ) , or stick to balance them in three or four levels ?

I also wonder if xfs performance is good for too many small files or not. I 
know it is the best for large files, but this is not my case ( my avarage 
file size is about 140k ) . If xfs is not the best choice for me , can you 
please suggest me a more suitable alternative.

One last question, I see that development in xfs is very active , Changelog 
is big :) does that mean that people who want to update their xfs to the 
latest code will need to backup and reformat partition with the new version 
, or just upgrade the kernel patches and program on the same filesystem ?


Best regards
sigsegv

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