I am using BTRFS on my laptop (well, on one of the three SSDs). I am using Ubuntu 12.10 with a custom built 3.8 kernel. On this system BTRFS just flies. It rivals EXT4 in performance, at least with respect to running multiple VMs.
I can't do an exact comparison since the SSD that the VMs live on is a better device than the EXT4 device (I have the BTRFS volume on a samsung 840 pro, while EXT4 lives on a Crucial M4 Internal mSATA). If you are using any kind of SD card, I would recommend EXT2 as the filesystem. The performance is going to be worse than a traditional spinning metal disk regardless of the filesystem, even with a Class 10 SD. You really do not want the over head of a journal which will negatively impact the performance and longevity of the SD card. I remember benchmarking the SSD that came with my Acer Aspire One netbook, and I was less than impressed. It was no better than the standard laptop drives of the day. You really want to play on a beefier machine. It does not have to be an extremely powerful PC, but I would stay away from anything Atom based. A core2duo or above should suffice. On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 1:26 AM, Greg King <[email protected]> wrote: > I see the Mint 14 uses the 3.5 kernel, so I loaded it on the eeePC with > btrfs and did the same sequence. It went a lot faster ~3 hours, but it's > not an apples to apples comparison since the update load was completely > different. btrfs seems to work better with the 3.5 kernel tho, and the > btrfs command has many more options so the file system is more complete. > > Greg > ------------------------------ > *From: *"Anand Singh" <[email protected]> > *To: *"CLUG General" <[email protected]> > *Sent: *Monday, 18 February, 2013 11:39:31 AM > *Subject: *Re: [clug-talk] BTRFS experience > > > At this point Ext4 is faster than BTRFS. Even under Linux 3.8, which saw > significant performance improvements for BTRFS, Ext4 is still faster, > especially with random file reads. > > If you enable LZO compression on btrfs, you will notice a big jump in > performance, but I don't know what impact that will have on RAID, > snapshots, clones, etc. Note that only files created after compression is > enabled will be affected, so it is best to enable this option during > installation. It's smart enough to avoid compressing large binaries. In > addition to a boost in performance, I appreciate having a few extra bytes > available on my tiny SSD. Anyone remember Stacker? Unlike that system, > BTRFS compresses files individually, and does not use a compressed volume. > > Anand. > On 2013-02-18 10:46 AM, "Greg King" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> At the last CLUG meeting there was some discussion around btrfs (binary >> tree file system), a copy on write file system that is friendlier towards >> SSDs and enables some great features like snapshots and raid. I decided to >> take it for a spin on my old eeePC 4G. It is one of the original eeePC with >> 512MB RAM and a 4G internal SSD. Linux Mint 13 (Maya) has outgrown the 4G >> internal SSD, so I used an 8G SDHC card for the OS. >> >> Mint/Ubuntu install lets you select the btrfs file system at install >> time, or you can convert from ext3/4 afterwards. I chose to install with >> btrfs and it worked without issues. There is a harmless bug in one of the >> startup scripts that causes the error message "Sparse file is not allowed" >> on reboots. It can be easily fixed by commenting out the offending check in >> the startup script, or installing /boot on an ext3/4 partition. >> >> So far everything looked great. Then I ran Mint update to bring the OS up >> to current software levels. It ran for about 28 hours! I had previously >> installed Maya on the same system with ext4 and I don't remember how long >> the update took, but it was no more than 2 or 3 hours at most. It appears >> as though btrfs needs lots of resources to perform, although it is promoted >> as higher performance than ext3/4. >> >> I haven't used the system much since the install. Even with xfce it is >> sluggish but usable. Maya is based on the latest Ubuntu long term support >> 12.04 which has kernel 3.2.0 . btrfs docs recommend the latest kernel >> possible since btrfs is under heavy development. Both SUSE and Oracle are >> claiming btrfs is ready for production service. >> >> Anyone else have experience with btrfs? How does it perform on more >> capable hardware? Is there a kernel level below which it should be avoided? >> >> _______________________________________________ >> clug-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca >> Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) >> **Please remove these lines when replying >> > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying >
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