Choosing the right file system depends on your specific requirements, including the type of data you’re storing, your scalability needs, and the operations you plan to perform. Since you’re setting up for a multi-client environment with databases, mail, and websites, let’s go over a few file system options that could meet your requirements:

1. General File Systems (Single Server, Standard Use)

• Ext4: Ext4 is a reliable, widely used Linux file system and is suitable for typical web hosting environments. It’s fast, stable, and well-supported but does not inherently support distribution across multiple servers, which may limit scalability and redundancy for high-availability setups.
• XFS: XFS is another Linux file system optimized for performance, especially with large files. It’s robust and scalable but has limited compatibility with data redundancy and clustering.

2. Network File Systems (For Multi-Server Access)

• NFS (Network File System): NFS allows multiple servers to access shared storage, making it suitable for hosting shared files or web assets. It’s reliable and simple but may not provide the high redundancy you’re looking for without additional setup.
• Ceph: Ceph is a distributed file system designed for scalability, high availability, and redundancy. It’s an open-source solution and suitable for hosting databases, websites, and large-scale data. Ceph self-manages replication and distribution, making it a good choice for a resilient setup across multiple servers.

3. Distributed File Systems (For Redundancy, Scalability, and High Availability)

• GlusterFS: GlusterFS is a distributed file system that’s straightforward to set up, scalable, and capable of handling a high number of concurrent clients. It’s commonly used in environments needing high redundancy and is manageable for beginners, as it has user-friendly tools for configuration and maintenance.
• Lustre: Lustre is high-performance and often used in environments requiring fast access to large data sets. However, it is more complex to set up and manage, so it may not be ideal for beginners without additional support.
• MooseFS: MooseFS is another open-source distributed file system that provides high availability and redundancy. It’s relatively user-friendly and designed to manage large data volumes across multiple servers.

4. Object Storage (For Large, Unstructured Data)

• MinIO: MinIO is an open-source, self-hosted object storage system compatible with the S3 API. It’s highly scalable and optimized for high availability and redundancy, which makes it suitable for web assets or large volumes of unstructured data but is less ideal for real-time transactional databases.

Recommendations for Your Use Case:

Since you’re new to storage and aiming for a reliable, open-source solution for web hosting with high availability and data redundancy, GlusterFS or Ceph would be strong choices.

• GlusterFS is simpler to deploy and may be more manageable as a beginner.
• Ceph offers a more comprehensive solution if you want advanced data replication, fault tolerance, and scalability for future growth.

Each of these options has a supportive community and extensive documentation, so they should both be manageable as you become more familiar with distributed storage setups.