Experiences on File Systems: Which is the best file system for you?

The distributed file system landscape is scattered. Besides a plethora of research file systems, there is also a large number of production grade file systems with various strengths and weaknesses. The file system, as an abstraction of permanent storage, is appealing because it provides application portability and integration with legacy and third-party applications, including UNIX utilities. On the other hand, the general and simple file system interface makes it notoriously difficult for a distributed file system to perform well under a variety of different workloads. This contribution provides a taxonomy of commonly used distributed file systems and points out areas of research and development that are particularly important for high-energy physics.