this paper, on our external WWW, describes what WAFL does regarding directory hashing, http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/3006.html

-----Original Message----- From: Strange, Steve [mailto:steve.strange@netapp.com] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 1999 4:31 PM To: 'Joanna Gaski'; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Migration to NetApp 740 from AlphaServer 2100

If you're used to AdvFS' performance with large directories, I think you'll be quite happy with WAFL in that regard. Last I knew, I don't think AdvFS did any directory hashing at all, so having 10K or more files in a single directory was not much fun.

Steve

-----Original Message----- From: Joanna Gaski [mailto:jgaski@WPI.EDU] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 1999 9:14 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Migration to NetApp 740 from AlphaServer 2100 2) Large directory constraints

Also, for the user areas, what are the practical constraints on the number of files in a directory? I am most used to AdvFS, under which large directories can be slow to open and read, if a user tries to do something like tab completion on a filename in a directory of 1000 entries.

Will I see the same kind of behavior with WAFL, and if so, does anyone have a good suggestion on breaking up the user space? We were thinking of using directory structure organization (nothing at logical partition level) for this.