I have a locally attached 5 TB RAID6 system (IBM DS3512). It will be used as a storage for large data files that are written in sequential writes, and then read back for processing. Eventually the data is deleted.
Directory traversal is not important, as we have our own indexing service.
Since this is an online system, availability and resilience from corruption is important, as is fast rebuild time.
Does XFS have particular advantages over EXT4 in this context?
Furthermore, how would I go about tuning the filesystem?
The target system runs RHEL 6.3.
Best Answer
I'd go with the default ext4, if only because it has shown in practice that it can take quite a beating, and in case of trouble there will probably be much more expertise at hand.
Oh, and before wishing you good luck, don't believe what colored squares with missing pieces tell you on random Internet sites. They might be spouting nonsense, no, they are spouting nonsense unless they know your problem and setup intimately. Set up an experiment with realistic data and workload, and measure. See if the difference really matters, look for other inputs. Check what your operating system vedor recommends.
Oh, and good luck! Please do add an answer (or a comment) with your analysis and conclusions here or contribute it to your distribution's documentation. Might even think of writing an article for LWN...