Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Scalable File System Add-On

Scalable File System add-on logoThe Scalable File System Add-On for Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the XFS® file system to provide support for file systems that are between 16 terabytes and 100 terabytes in size. You can manage these large data stores using advanced features such as 64-bit journalling and advanced locking algorithms. In addition to supporting very large files and file systems on a single host, XFS also performs well on smaller systems running multi-threaded parallel I/O workloads.

Scalable File System Add-On Features and Benefits

Features Benefits
High Performance
  • Intelligent organization of file system metadata minimizes wasted space and generates lists of used and free space to speed write operations
  • Multi-threaded operations perform simultaneous file system operations that increase scalability
  • Extent-based allocation and sorted lists of available free extents speed up selection of needed space
  • Delaying allocation of disk extents until data is flushed minimizes fragmentation
  • Data is transferred between user space memory and the disk using DMA (Direct Memory Access), which allows access to the full I/O bandwidth of the underlying disk devices for high-throughput disk applications
Quota Support

Project quotas can be used to restrict the amount of storage used by a given directory tree
Online properties

Common operations such as defragmentation and filesystem growth may be performed while the filesystem remains mounted. Online properties reduces the downtime often associated with unmounting to perform administrative tasks.
Snapshots and backups
  • Hardware snapshots can be facilitated by freezing an XFS® file system while the snapshot is taken.
  • Backups can be made from live XFS file systems