> For the first time I will be using a 1-2 Terrabyte hard drive on any SL
> release, in particular,  on  an older SL5.0 (boron) OS.
>
> There's plenty on the web about pros and cons for larger file systems
> (resier, xfs, ext3, ext4, ...).   I've usually stayed with ext3 (200-500
> Gb HD that are NFS mounted to linux or windows using MS windows for unix).
>  So, vanilla; not too splashy a set up.  No clusters.  I've not used LVM.
>
> I think my question is which of these choices is as well developed,
> mature, and easy to use as ext3 for the SL5.0 boron version of SL?   I'm
> most familiar with ext3 and do these stray IT tasks as needed, so I've not
> kept up on the latest and greatest.
>
> Thanks for any comments,
> Bill Lutter
>

Hi Bill - I'm running a data server with SL5.2.  I have several 2-6TB
filesystems and one ~21TB filesystem, all hanging off a few 3ware cards. 
The system has grown a bit piecemeal as our needs expanded, so there's no
grand design here - basically what I could get to work.  The 2-6TB
filesystems are ext3.  The 21TB filesystem is xfs (to echo a previous
comment, make sure you use parted or similar rather than fdisk when
creating a large filesystem and make a gpt label). BTW, the system is of
course 64bit if that has an impact on xfs filesystems.
I can say that I've been running like this for about 2-3 years with not
a single issue.  Granted, the server is not under a huge load, basically
archive data, retrieve/access on a daily sort of timescale - ie. people
grabbing a few tens of ~100MB files on a daily basis.  YMMV, but that's
a data point for you!
-Karl

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| Karl A. Misselt                             Office: Steward 254  |
| Steward Observatory                          Phone: 520-626-0196 |
| University of Arizona                          FAX: 520-621-9555 |
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