[Linux] ext2 vs ext3 vs ext4 for Bukkit server

Simple question: what's the best Linux filesystem for a Minecraft/Bukkit server?

 

tmpfs (ram disk)

ext2 isn't really an option unless your snapshoting backups somewhere else as it isn't journaled.

other than that, ext4 with proper tuning parameters or btrfs are likely fastest. While btrfs hasn't really caught up to ext4 in many ways the one thing it does do really well is dealing with lots of small files which is great for minecraft.

 

I use a RAM disk. I guess file system doesn't matter then, except for the periodic backup to the hard drive (of updated files only of course). If I didn't use a RAM disk, what would be proper parameters for ext4? Thanks!

 

Minecraft doesn't have as many small files as it use to so it isn't *as* critical. A ramdisk filesystem (tmpfs for example) is the fastest if you have the memory as xianthax said. My hunch is that the differences in performance between the three exts isn't significant enough to warrant using ext2 or ext3 unless you are running a very large server, in which case you should be using tmpfs anyway.

 

There are a number of performance tuning options available with ext4, almost all make some sort of trade off between performance and data integrity in the event of a power fail or kernel panic, as such use them only if your server has proper UPS and is reliable or your backup solution can deal with losing the last 5 minutes of data.

Mount options I use, google will explain them:

journal_async_commit
noatime
data=writeback
commit=300
barrier=0
stripe=6 (only applicable to RAID arrays)