Improving XFS file system inode performance

[Dave Chinner]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 08:49:35AM -0600, Jesse Stroik wrote:
> Dave,
> 
> Thanks.  This is precisely what I was looking for.  I'll let you
> know how it turns out.
> 
> As this file system is likely to continue to increase in number of
> files at a fairly rapid rate, we're going to need a long term
> strategy.  I suspect it may be necessary in the near future to
> double or quadruple the memory to 32GB or 64GB, but the uncertainty
> in the formula makes me nervous.
> 
> For a situation like this, it would be ideal if we could specify an
> inode cache size.

That's the third request in a few weeks I've had for being able to
fix the inode cache size to either prevent it from growing too large
or to prevent it from being reclaimed prematurely. I doubt I'll ever
be able to get the VFS cache capped (people have tried in the past
with no success), so I'm going to look at providing a method for XFS
to provide limits on the size of it's inode cache.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david at fromorbit.com