Re: Large single raid and XFS or two small ones and EXT3?

[Chris Allen <chris@cjx.com>]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Gordon Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, Chris Allen wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> I have a Linux storage server containing 16x750GB drives - so 12TB raw
>>> space.
>>
>> Just one thing - Do you want to use RAID-5 or RAID-6 ?
>>
>> I just ask, as with that many drives (and that much data!) the
>> possibilities of a 2nd drive failure is increasing, and personally,
>> wherever I can, I take the hit these days, and have used RAID-6 for
>> some time... drives are cheap, even the 750GB behemoths!
>>
>>> If I make them into a single RAID5 array, then it appears my only
>>> choice for a filesystem is XFS - as  EXT3 won't really handle 
>>> partitions
>>> over 8TB.
>>
>> I can't help with this though - I didn't realise ext3 had such a
>> limitation though!
>>
>
> 16 TB (2^32 blocks) should be the right number.
>
It should be, but mkfs.ext3 won't let me create a filesystem bigger than 
8TB.
It appears that the only way round this is through kernel patches, and, 
as this
is a production machine, I'd rather stick to mainstream releases and go 
for one
of the above solutions.