The following are submissions from system administrators who are
using XFS in a production environment - click to jump to more information.
If you have a notable
XFS installation you'd like to have added to the list, please
send email to sandeen at sgi.com.
"The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is an ambitious effort to map one-quarter of
the sky at optical and very-near infrared wavelengths and take spectra of 1
million extra-galactic objects. The estimated amount of data that will be
acquired over the 5 year lifespan of the project is 15TB, however, the total
amount of storage space required for object informational databases,
corrected frames, and reduced spectra will be several factors more than
this. The goal is to have all the data online and available to the
collaborators at all times. To accomplish this goal we are using commodity,
off the shelf (COTS) Intel servers with EIDE disks configured as RAID50 arrays
using XFS. Currently, 14 machines are in production accounting for over 18TB.
By the scheduled end of the survey in 2005, 50TB of XFS disks will be online
serving SDSS data to collaborators and the public."
"For complete details and status of the project please see
http://www.sdss.org.
For details of the storage systems, see the
SDSS
Storage Server Technical Note."
"The Quantum Guardian™ 14000, the latest Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution
from Quantum, delivers 1.4TB of enterprise-class storage for less than
$25,000. The Guardian 14000 is a Linux-based device which utilizes XFS
to provide a highly reliable journaling filesystem with simultaneous
support for Windows, UNIX, Linux and Macintosh environments. As
dedicated appliance optimized for fast, reliable file sharing, the
Guardian 14000 combines the simplicity of NAS with a robust feature set
designed for the most demanding enterprise environments. Support for
tools such as Active Directory Service (ADS), UNIX Network Information
Service (NIS) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) provides
ease of management and seamless integration. Hardware redundancy,
Snapshots and StorageCare™ on-site service ensure security for
business-critical data."
"At BigStorage we pride ourselves on tailoring our NAS systems to meet our
customer's needs, with the help of XFS we are able to provide them with the
most reliable Journaling Filesystem technology available. Our open systems
approach, which allows for cross-platform integration, gives our customers
the flexibility to grow with their data requirements. In addition,
BigStorage offers a variety of other features including total hardware
redundancy, snapshotting, replication and backups directly from the unit.
All of our products include BigStorage’s 24/7 LiveResponse™ support. With
LiveResponse™, we keep our team of experienced technical experts on call 24
hours a day, every day, to ensure that your storage investment remains
online, all the time."
"Echostar uses the XFS filesystem for its latest generation of satellite receivers,
the DP721. Echostar chose XFS for its performance, stability and unique set of features."
"XFS allowed us to meet a demanding requirement of recording two mpeg2 streams to the
internal hard drive while simultaneously viewing a third pre-recorded stream.
In addition, XFS allowed us to withstand unexpected power loss without filesystem
corruption or user interaction."
"We tested several other filesystems, but XFS emerged as the clear winner."
"I run the Center for Cytometry and Molecular Imaging at the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, CA. We're a core facility for the Institute,
offering flow cytometry, basic and deconvolution microscopy,
phosphorimaging (radioactivity imaging) and fluorescent imaging."
"I'm currently in the process of migrating our data server to
Linux/XFS. Our web server currently uses Linux/XFS. We have about
60 Gb on the data server which has a 100Gb SCSI RAID 5 array. This
is a bit restrictive for our microscopists so in order that they
can put more data online, I'm adding another machine, also running
Linux/XFS, with about 420 Gb of IDE-RAID5, based on Adaptec
controllers...."
"Servers are configured with quota and run Samba, NFS, and Netatalk
for connectivity to the mixed bag of computers we have around here.
I use the CVS XFS tree most of the time. I have not seen any
problems in the several months I have been testing."
"Coltex Retail group BV in the Netherlands uses Red Hat Linux with XFS for
their main database server which collects the data from over 240 clothing
retail stores throughout the Netherlands. Coltex depends on the availability
of the server for over 100 hundred employees in the main office for
retrieval of logistical and sales figures. The database size is roughly
10GB large containing both historical and current data."
"The entire production and logistical system depends on the availability of
the system and downtime would mean a significant financial penalty. The
speed and reliability of the XFS filesystem which has a proven track record
and mature tools to go with it is fundamental to the availability of the
system."
"XFS has saved us a lot of time during testing and implementation. A long
filesystems check is no longer needed when bad things happen when they do.
The increased speed of our database system which is based on Progress 9.1C
is also a nice benefit to this filesystem."
"I'm currently in the process of slowly converting 21 clusters
totaling 2300+ processors over to XFS."
"These machines are running a fairly stock RH7.1+XFS. The
application is our own custom scheduler for doing genomic
research. We have one of the worlds largest sequencing
labs which generates a tremendous amount of raw data. Vast
amounts of CPU cycles must be applied to it to turn it
into useful data we can then sell access to."
"Currently, a minority of these machines are running XFS,
but as I can get downtime on the clusters I am upgrading
them to 7.1+XFS. When I'm done, it'll be about 10TB of XFS
goodness... across 9G disks mostly."
"We've replaced our NetApp filer (80GB, $40,000). NetApp ONTAP software
[runs on NetApp filers] is basically an NFS and CIFS server with their
own proprietary filesystem. We were quickly running out of space and
our annual budget almost depleted. What were we to do?"
"With an off-the-shelf Dell 4400 series server and 300GB of disks ($8,000
total). We were able to run Linux and Samba to emulate a NetApp filer."
"XFS allowed us to manage 300GB of data with absolutely no downtime (now
going on 79 days) since implementation. Gone are the days of fearing
the fsck of 300GB."
"We use a production server with a 270 GB RAID 5 (hardware) disk array.
It is based on a Suse 7.2 distribution, but with a standard 2.4.12
kernel with XFS and LVM patches. The server provides NFS to 8 Unix clients
as well as Samba to about 80 PCs. The machine also runs Bind 9, Apache,
Exim, DHCP, POP3, MySQL. I have tried out different configurations
with ReiserFS, but I didn't manage to find a stable configuration with
respect to NFS. Since I converted all disks to XFS some 3 months ago,
we never had any filesystem-related problems."
"Here at the IQ Group, Inc. we use XFS for all our production and
development servers."
"Our OS of choice is Slackware Linux 8.0. Our hardware of choice is
Dell and VALinux servers."
"As for applications, we run the standard Unix/Linux apps like Sendmail,
Apache, BIND, DHCP, iptables, etc.; as well as Oracle 9i and Arkeia."
"We've been running XFS across the board for about 3 months now without a
hitch (so far)."
"Size-wise, our biggest server is about 40 GB, but that will be
increasing substantially in the near future."
"Our production servers are collocated so a journaled FS was a must.
Reboots are quick and no human interaction is required like with a bad
fsck on ext2. Additionally, our database servers gain additional
integrity and robustness."
"We originally chose XFS over ReiserFS and ext3 because of it's age (it's
been in production on SGI boxes for probably longer than all the other
journaling FS's combined) and it's speed appeared comparable as well."
"I've got XFS on a 'production' file server. The machine could have up to
500 people logged in, but typically less than 200. Most are Mac users,
connected via NetAtalk for 'personal files', although there are shared
areas for admin units. Probably about 30-40 windows users. (Samba)
It's the file server for an Academic faculty at a University."
"Hardware RAID, via Mylex dual channel controller with 4 drives, Intel
Tupelo MB, Intel 'SC5000' server chassis with redundant power and
hot-swap scsi bays. The system boots off a non RAID single 9gb UW-scsi
drive."
"Only system 'crash' was caused by some one accidentally unplugging it,
just before we put it into production. It was back in full operation
within 5 minutes. Without journaling, the fsck would have taken well
over an hour. In day to day use it has run well."
"I run a high-performance computing center for Structural Biology research
at Vanderbilt University. We use XFS extensively, and have been since the
late prerelease versions. I've had nothing but good experiences with it."
"We began using XFS in our search for a good solution for our RAID
fileservers. We had such good experiences with it on these systems that
we've begun putting it on the root/usr/var partitions of every Linux
system we run here. I even have it on my laptop these days. XFS in
combination with the 2.4 NFS3 implementation performs very well for us,
and we have great uptimes on these systems (Our 750GB ArenaII setup is at
143 days right now)."
"All told, we've got about 1.2TB of XFS filesystems spinning right now.
It's spread out across maybe a dozen or so filesystems and will
continue to increase as we are growing fast and that's all we use now.
Next up is putting it on our 17-node Linux cluster, which will bring that
up to 1.5TB spread across 30 filesystems."
"I, for one, would LOVE to see XFS make it into the kernel tree. From my
perspectives, it's one of the best things to happen to Linux in the 7
years I've been using/administering it."
CDF, an elementary particle physics experiment at Fermi National Lab,
is using XFS for all our cache disks.
The usage model is that we have a PB tape archive (2 STK silos)
as permanent storage. In front of this archive we are deploying
a roughly 100TB disk cache system. The cache is made up of 50 2TB
file server based on cheap commodity hardware (3ware based hardware raid
using IDE drives). The data is then processed by a cluster of 300 Dual CPU
Linux PC's. The cache software is dCache, a DESY/FNAL product.
The whole system is used by more than 300 active users from all over the
world for batch processing for their physics data analysis.
Lando International Group Technologies is the home of:
- Lanndo Technologies Africa (Pty) Ltd - Internet Service Provider
- Linux Based Systems Design (Article 21). Not-For-Profit
company established to provide free Linux distributions and programs.
- Cell Park South Africa (Pty) Ltd. RSA Pat Appln 2001/10406. Collecting
parking fees by means of cell phone SMS or voice.
- Read Plus Education (Pty) Ltd. Software based reading skills training
and testing for ages 4 to 100.
- Mobivan. Mobile office including Internet access, fax, copying,
printing, telephone, collection and delivery services, legal
services, pre-paid phone and electricity services, bill payment email,
secretarial services, training facilities and management services.
- Lando International Marketing Agency. Direct marketing services, design
and supply of promotional material, consulting, sourcing of capital and
other funding.
- Illico. Software development and systems analysis on most platforms.
"Throughout these companies, we use the XFS filesystem with
IDMS Linux on high-end Intel servers, with an average of
100 GB storage each. XFS stores our customer and user data,
including credit card details, mail, routing tables, etc.. We have not had one problem
since the release of the first XFS patch."
"We are an advertisement company in Germany, and the use of the XFS filesystem
is a story of success for us. In our Hamburg office, we have two file servers
having a 420 Gig RAID in XFS format serving (almost) all our data to about 180
Macs and about 30 PCs using Samba and Netatalk. Some of the data is used in
our offices in Frankfurt and Berlin, and in fact the Berlin office is just
getting it's own 250 Gig fileserver (using XFS) right now."
"The general success with XFS has led us to switch over all our Linux servers
to run on XFS as well (with the exception of two systems that are tied to
tight specifications configuration wise). XFS, even the old 1.0 version, has
happily taken on various abuse - broken SCSI controllers, broken RAID systems."
"We here at MPC use XFS/RedHat 7.2 on all of our graphics-workstations
and file-servers. More info can be found in an
article LinuxUser magazine did on us recently."
"We are currently using XFS for 25+ production web-servers, ~900GB Oracle
db servers, with potentially 15+ more servers by mid 2003, with ~900GB+
databases. All XFS installed."
"Also, our dev environment, except for the Sun boxes which all are being
migrated to X86 in the aforementioned server additions, plus the dev Sun
boxes as well, are all x86 dual proc servers running Oracle, application
servers, or web services as needed. All servers run XFS from images
we've got on our SystemImager servers."
"All production back-end servers are connected via FC1 or FC2 to a SAN
containing ~13TB of raw storage, which, will soon be converted from VxFS
to XFS with the migration of Oracle to our x86 platforms."
"evolt.org, a world community for web
developers promoting the mutual free exchange of ideas, skills and
experiences, has had a great deal of success using XFS. Our primary
webserver which serves 100K hosts/month, primary Oracle database with
~25Gb of data, and free member hosting for 1000 users haven't had a minute
of downtime since XFS has been installed. Performance has been
spectacular and maintenance a breeze."
All testimonials on this page represent the views of the submitters,
and references to other products and companies should not be construed
as an endorsement by either the organizations profiled, or by SGI.
All trademarks (r) their respective owners.
