Since the purpose of a database system is to store data, there is a close relationship with the filesystem. As MySQL consultants, we always look at the filesystems for performance tuning opportunities. The most common choices in term of filesystems are XFS and EXT4; on Linux, it is exceptional to encounter another filesystem. Both XFS and EXT4 have pros and cons, but their behaviors are well-known and they perform well. They perform well but they are not without shortcomings.
Over the years, we have developed a bunch of tools and techniques to overcome these shortcomings. For example, since they don't allow a consistent view of the filesystem, we wrote tools like Xtrabackup to backup a live MySQL database. Another example is the InnoDB double write buffer. The InnoDB double write buffer is required only because neither XFS nor EXT4 is transactional. There is one filesystem which offers nearly all the features we need, ZFS. ZFS is arguably the most advanced filesystem available on Linux. Maybe it is time to reconsider the use of ZFS with MySQL.
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