Subject: Re: File System Types
To: J. Buck Caldwell <buckaroo@igps.org>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 06/23/2000 17:46:11
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, J. Buck Caldwell wrote:

> Is there a primer out there on File System types? Most of my systems
> just use FFS, as I suppose is normal, but I'm wondering about all the
> other types and what thier benifits and shortcomings are.
> 
> In particular, I'm wondering if Unix has something along the lines of a
> NT Volume Set or Stripe Set. Sort of a RAID with no RAID controller.
> 
> Perhaps I should elaborate: I have a VAX4000/200 with over 100G of SCSI
> drives, most in 2G, 3G, 4G, and 10G differential format. I also
> (luckily) have enough differential SCSI controllers to put them all
> online. However, I don't want to be limited to 2G FFS file systems. What

	NetBSD FFS filesystem have not been limited to 2GB for a very long
	time (if ever).

> I want to know, is can I take (say) 5 10G drives, and create a file
> system that spans the drives, effectively giving me a 50G file system?
> The obvious question would be, if it can be done, do all the drives have
> to be on the same controller, or can there be a speed boost given by
> splitting them up over multiple controllers?

	For a filesystem to span multiple devices you can either use
	ccd (striped or concatenated), or RAIDframe for full software
	RAID functionality. 'man ccd' or 'man raid' :)


		David/absolute
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