Checkout the GFS project for really large filesystems with a high capability
of "fail safe" configuration.
The block/file limits are more determined by the size of the hosts. Alpha/Sparc
based systems use 64 bit operations, Intel/AMD use 32 bit. It also depends
on usage of the sign bit in the drivers. Most 32bit systems are limited
to 1 TB (depending on the driver of course - some allow for 2 TB).
>2. Does linux have any problems with large (500GB+) NFS exports, how about
>large files over NFS?
I can't really say - you might clarify by what you count as large ( just > 2G
should be fine for any current kernel), not sure if "large" means 25-100GB.
>3. What filesystem would be best for such large volumes? We currently use
>reirserfs on our internal system, but they generally have filesystems in the
>18-30GB ranges and we're talking about potentially 10-20x that. Should we
>look at JFS/XFS or others?
The GFS project already has tested 2TB in fiber channel array(s) with full
multi-host connectivity (shared filesystems rather than NFS). See:
for details. It is not currently included in Linux distribution. The
current GFS version is 4.0 and works in kernel 2.2.18 and higher.
The big advantage with GFS is that redundant servers can be available
by having two or more NFS servers attached to the same GFS filesystem.
>4. We're seriously considering using LVM for volume management. Does it
>have size limits per volume or other limitations that we should be aware of?
GFS may serve better. It is a full shared filesystem with RAID target disks
(these are smart controllers) and incudes journaling.
>I'm sure these answers are out there, but I haven't been able to find
>definitive answers (it seems everyone has a different answer to each
>question). Any assistance in pointing me to the correct information would
>be greatly appreciated.
I haven't had direct expierence with GFS, but it looks very impressive in
the documentation.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesse I Pollard, II Email: jesse@cats-chateau.netAny opinions expressed are solely my own. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/