The ext4 and XFS filesystems are both widely used on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but they have different design goals and performance characteristics. Here's a breakdown of their key differences in the context of RHEL:
1. Age and Maturity
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Introduced |
2008 (successor to ext3) |
1994 (SGI IRIX; ported to Linux later) |
| Maturity |
Very mature and stable |
Also mature, especially on large-scale systems |
2. Scalability and Performance
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Max Filesystem Size |
1 EiB (practical ~50 TiB) |
8 EiB |
| Max File Size |
16 TiB |
8 EiB |
| Metadata Performance |
Good |
Excellent for large files/directories |
| Best for |
General-purpose workloads |
High-performance, large-scale storage |
3. Journaling and Metadata Handling
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Journaling |
Yes |
Yes |
| Metadata Handling |
Inline journaling |
Separate metadata journaling |
| Delayed Allocation |
Yes |
Yes, and more aggressive |
4. Snapshots and Quotas
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Snapshots |
Not natively |
Not natively (requires LVM or external tools) |
| Quotas |
Yes (traditional) |
Yes (project quotas supported) |
5. Filesystem Maintenance Tools
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Online Resize |
Shrink & Grow |
Grow only |
| fsck Required |
Yes |
No (uses xfs_repair) |
| Defragmentation |
Yes (e4defrag) |
Yes (xfs_fsr) |
6. Use in RHEL
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Default in RHEL 6 |
Yes |
No |
| Default in RHEL 7+ |
No |
Yes |
| Recommended for |
Boot partitions, smaller systems |
Large-scale servers, database workloads |
7. Special Features
| Feature |
ext4 |
XFS |
| Extent-based allocation |
Yes |
Yes |
| Copy-on-write |
No |
No (not like Btrfs or ZFS) |
| Real-time Subvolume |
No |
Yes (for real-time workloads) |
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Posted : 19/10/2025 5:55 pm
