About Veritas File System

A file system is simply a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. More formally, a file system is a set of abstract data types (such as metadata) that are implemented for the storage, hierarchical organization, manipulation, navigation, access, and retrieval of data.

Veritas File System (VxFS) was the first commercial journaling file system. With journaling, metadata changes are first written to a log (or journal) then to disk. Since changes do not need to be written in multiple places, throughput is much faster as the metadata is written asynchronously.

VxFS is also an extent-based, intent logging file system. VxFS is designed for use in operating environments that require high performance and availability and deal with large amounts of data.

The maximum size of the file system you can create depends on the block size.

Block Size

Currently-Supported Maximum File System Size

1024 bytes

68,719,472,624 sectors (≈32 TB)

2048 bytes

137,438,945,248 sectors (≈64 TB)

4096 bytes

274,877,890,496 sectors (≈128 TB)

8192 bytes

549,755,780,992 sectors (≈256 TB)

VxFS major components include:

File system logging

About the Veritas File System intent log

Extents

About extents

File system disk layouts

About file system disk layouts