Part I File Systems and Mounting #

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server ships with different file systems from which to choose, including Btrfs, Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, ReiserFS and XFS. Each file system has its own advantages and disadvantages. For a side-by-side feature comparison of the major file systems in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, see https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/12-SP5/#TechInfo.Filesystems (File System Support and Sizes). This chapter contains an overview of how these file systems work and what advantages they offer.

Resizing file systems—not to be confused with resizing partitions or volumes—can be used to make space available on physical volumes or to use additional space available on a physical volume.

This section describes the use of UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) instead of device names (such as /dev/sda1) to identify file system devices. Starting with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, UUIDs are used by default in the boot loader file and the /etc/fstab file.

A multi-tier cache is a replicated/distributed cache that consists of at least two tiers: one is represented by slower but cheaper rotational block devices (hard disks), while the other is more expensive but performs faster data operations (for example SSD flash disks).