List of file systems
From Free net encyclopedia
The following lists identify, characterise and link to fuller information on computer file systems.
Many older operating systems support only their one "native" file system, which does not bear any name apart from the name of the operating system itself. Examples of such include the CP/M file system and the Apple DOS file system. These unnamed file systems don't appear in the following list.
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Disk file systems
- ADFS – Acorn's Advanced Disc filing system, successor to DFS.
- BFS – the Be File System used on BeOS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS
- EFS (IRIX) – an older block filing system under IRIX.
- Ext – Extended file system, designed for Linux systems
- Ext2 – Second extended file system, designed for Linux systems.
- Ext3 – Name for the journalled form of ext2.
- FAT – Used on DOS and Microsoft Windows, 12-, 16- and 32-bit table depths. Compare VFAT.
- FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on Amiga systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2.
- FFS – Fast File System, used on *BSD systems
- Fossil – Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system.
- Files-11 – OpenVMS file system
- HFS – Hierarchical File System, used on older Mac OS systems
- HFS Plus – Updated version of HFS, used on newer Mac OS systems. Recent versions allow journaling.
- HPFS – High Performance File System, used on OS/2
- ISO 9660 – Used on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (Rock Ridge and Joliet are extensions to this)
- JFS – IBM Journaling file system, provided in Linux, OS/2, and AIX
- LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a log-structured file system
- MFS – Macintosh File System, used on early Mac OS systems
- Minix file system – Used on Minix systems
- NILFS – Linux implementation of a log-structured file system
- NTFS – Used on Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems
- NSS – Novell Storage Services. This is a new 64-bit journaling file system using a balanced tree algorithm. Used in NetWare versions 5.0-up and recently ported to Linux.
- OFS – Old File System, on Amiga. Nice for floppies, but fairly useless on hard drives.
- PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the Amiga, performs very well under a lot of circumstances. Very simple and elegant.
- ReiserFS – File system that uses journaling
- Reiser4 – File system that uses journaling, newest version of ReiserFS
- SFS – Smart File System, journaling file system available for the Amiga platforms.
- UDF – Packet based file system for WORM/RW media such as CD-RW and DVD.
- UFS – Unix File System, used on older BSD systems
- UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer BSD systems
- VxFS – Veritas file system, first commercial journaling file system; HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX
- WAFL – High performance, log-structured like file system. WAFL heavily uses RAID 4, and NVRAM for transaction log replays. Used on Network Appliance systems
- XFS – Used on SGI IRIX and Linux systems
- ZFS – Used on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (not to be confused with zFS from IBM)
Record-oriented file systems
In Record-oriented file systems files are stored as a collection of records. They are associated with mainframe and midrange operating systems.
- Virtual storage access method (VSAM) - Used on System/370 and MVS
Shared disk file systems
Shared disk file systems (also called shared storage file systems or even cluster file systems) are primarily used in a storage area network where all nodes directly access the block storage where the the file system is located. This makes it possible for nodes to fail without affecting access to the file system from the other nodes. Shared disk file systems are normally used in a high-availability cluster together with storage on hardware RAID. Shared disk file systems normally do not scale over 64 or 128 nodes.
Shared disk file systems may be symmetric where metadata is distributed among the nodes or asymmetric with centralized metadata servers.
- ADIC StorNext file system from ADIC. Asymmetric. Available for AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris and Windows. Interoperable with Xsan.
- CXFS (Clustered XFS) from Silicon Graphics (SGI). Available for AIX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Asymmetric.
- EMC Celerra Highroad from EMC. Available for AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris and Windows. Asymmetric.
- DataPlow Nasan File System from DataPlow. Available for Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric.
- DataPlow SAN File System from DataPlow. Available for IRIX, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Symmetric.
- Global File System (GFS) from Red Hat. Available for Linux under GPL. Symmetric (GDLM) or Asymmetric (GULM).
- HP Cluster File System (CFS) from HP. Available for HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX.
- IBM SanFS from IBM. Available for AIX, Linux and Windows. Asymmetric.
- Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) from Oracle Corporation. Available for Linux under GPL. Symmetric.
- Polyserve Matrix Server from PolyServe. Available for Windows and Linux. Symmetric.
- QFS from Sun Microsystems. Available for Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric.
- Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System (CFS) from Symantec. Available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric.
- Xsan from Apple Computer. Available for Mac OS. Asymmetric. Interoperable with ADIC StorNext file system.
- VMFS2 from VMware/EMC. Available for VMWare ESX Server. Asymmetric.
Distributed file systems
Distributed file systems are also called network file systems. Normally many implementations have been made, they are location dependent and they have access control lists (ACLs), unless otherwise stated below.
- 9P, the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno distributed file system protocol. One implementation is v9fs. No ACLs.
- Andrew file system (AFS) is scalable and location independent, has a heavy client cache and uses Kerberos for authentication. Implementations include the original from IBM (earlier Transarc), Arla and OpenAFS.
- Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) from Apple Computer.
- DCE Distributed File System (DCE/DFS) from IBM (earlier Transarc) is similar to AFS and focus on full POSIX file system semantics and high availability. Available for AIX and Solaris under a proprietary software license.
- NetWare Core Protocol from Novell.
- Network File System (NFS) originally from Sun Microsystems is the standard in UNIX-based networks. NFS may use Kerberos authentication and a client cache.
- Server message block (SMB) originally from IBM (but the most common version is modified heavily by Microsoft) is the standard in Windows-based networks. SMB is also known as Common Internet File System (CIFS) or Samba file system. SMB may use Kerberos authentication.
Distributed fault tolerant file systems
Distributed fault tolerant replicate data between nodes (between servers or servers/clients) for high availability and offline (disconnected) operation.
- Coda from Carnegie Mellon University focus in offline (disconnected) operation for mobile computing. Origin in AFS2.
- Distributed File System (Microsoft) (Dfs) from Microsoft focus in location transparency and high availability. Available for Windows under a proprietary software license.
- InterMezzo from Cluster File Systems, Inc. uses syncronization over HTTP. Available for Linux under GPL but no longer in development since the developers are working on Lustre.
Distributed parallel file systems
Distributed parallel file systems stripe data over multiple servers for high performance. They are normally used in a high-performance computing (HPC).
Some of the parallel file systems may use object-based storage device (OSD) (In Lustre called OST) for chunks of data together with centralized metadata servers.
- Parallel Virtual File System 2 (PVFS2). Available for Linux under GPL.
- Lustre from Cluster File Systems, Inc.. (Lustre has failover, but multi-server RAID1 or RAID5 is still in their roadmap for future versions.) Available for Linux under GPL.
Distributed parallel fault tolerant file systems
Distributed file systems, which also are parallel and fault tolerant, stripe and replicate data over multiple servers for high performance and to maintain data integrity. Even if a server fails no data is lost. The file systems are used in both high-performance computing (HPC) and high-availability clusters.
The current world record in file system performance (january 2006) is held by GPFS from IBM with 102 GByte/s sustained read/write to a single file on the ASC Purple at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the current third fastest supercomputer.
All file systems listed here focus on high availability, scalability and high performance unless otherwise stated below.
- General Parallel File System (GPFS) from IBM. Available for AIX and Linux under a proprietary software license.
- Gfarm file system uses OpenLDAP or Postgresql for metadata and LUFS for mounting. Available for Linux under GPL.
- Google File System (GFS) from Google focus on fault tolerance, high bandwidth and scalability. Not freely available.
- IBRIX Fusion from IBRIX. Available for Linux under a proprietary software license.
- OneFS distributed file system from Isilon. Available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and other UNIX clients under a proprietary software license.
- Panasas ActiveScale File System (PanFS) from Panasas uses object-based storage. Available for Linux under a proprietary software license.
- PeerFS from Radiant Data Corporation focus on high availability and high performance and uses peer-to-peer replication with multiple sources and targets. Available for Linux under a proprietary software license.
- TerraGrid Cluster File System from Terrascale Technologies Inc implements on demand cache coherency and uses industrial standard iSCSI and a modified version of the XFS file system. Available for Linux under a proprietary software license.
- zFS from IBM (not to be confused with ZFS from Sun Microsystems) focus on cooperative cache and distributed transactions and uses object-based storage. Under development and not freely available.
Special purpose file systems
- acme (Plan 9) (text windows)
- archfs (archive)
- cdfs (reading and writing of CDs)
- cfs (caching)
- Cramfs (small footprint compressed read-only)
- Davfs2 (WebDAV)
- devfs
- EncFS, GPL Encrypted file system in user-space
- EFS – Encrypted file system for Microsoft Windows systems. An extension of NTFS
- ftpfs (ftp access)
- fuse (file system in userspace, like LUFS but better maintained)
- FuseCompress (based on FUSE. provides transparent compression)
- Freenet – Decentralized, censorship-resistant
- JFFS/JFFS2 (file systems designed specifically for flash devices)
- YAFFS - Yet Another Flash File System
- lnfs (long names)
- LUFS (Linux userland file system - seem to be abandoned in favour of FUSE)
- nntpfs (netnews)
- ParFiSys (Experimental parallel file system for massively parallel processing)
- plumber (Plan 9) (interprocess communication – pipes)
- procfs – pseudo-file system, used to access kernel information about processes
- relayfs
- romfs
- Secure Shell File System (SSHFS) - locally mount a remote directory on a server using only a secure shell login.
- specfs (Special File System for device files )
- SquashFS (compressed read-only)
- sysfs (Linux)
- tmpfs
- UMSDOS – FAT file system extended to store permissions and metadata, used for Linux.
- UnionFS – stackable unification file system, which can appear to merge the contents of several directories (branches), while keeping their physical content separate
- wikifs (Plan 9) (wiki wiki)