Before moving back to NoSQL databases, I wanted to stay in the land of file systems for a conversation between Jeff Darcy and David Strauss about the usage of file systems for large scale and high availability:

As I see it, aggregating local filesystems to provide a single storage pool with a filesystem interface and aggregating local filesystems to provide a single storage pool with another interface (such as a column-oriented database) aren’t even different enough to say that one is definitely preferable to the other. The same fundamental issues, and many of the same techniques, apply to both. Saying that filesystems are the wrong way to address scale is like saying that a magnetic #3 Phillips screwdriver is the wrong way to turn a screw. Sometimes it is exactly the right tool, and other times the “right” tool isn’t as different from the “wrong” tool as its makers would have you believe.

Original title and link: Scaling Filesystems vs. Other Things (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/index.php/2012/01/scaling-filesystems-vs-other-things/