Re: Does btrfs on Linux have a negative performance impact for PostgreSQL 13?

On 24/04/21, Christophe Pettus (xof(at)thebuild(dot)com) wrote:
> > On Apr 24, 2021, at 11:27, Simon Connah <simon(dot)n(dot)connah(at)protonmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm curious, really. I use btrfs as my filesystem on my home systems and am setting up a server as I near releasing my project. I planned to use btrfs on the server, but it got me thinking about PostgreSQL 13. Does anyone know if it would have a major performance impact?
>
> This is a few years old, but Tomas Vondra did a presentation comparing major Linux file systems for PostgreSQL:
>
> https://www.slideshare.net/fuzzycz/postgresql-on-ext4-xfs-btrfs-and-zfs

I guess btrfs and zfs on linux performance might have improved somewhat since Tomas' analysis in 2015.

Personally I've been a keen personal user of btrfs for over 5 years for its snapshot support, transparent compression and bitrot detection. However I can't think of a reason to use it for a production server. It's slower than ext4 and xfs, postgresql's dumping and streaming are probably better bets than snapshots for backup, and relatively few others are likely to be comfortable administering it. But maybe I'm missing something.

Phoronix run btrfs benchmarks from time-to-time. See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Btrfs

Rory