SGI released XFS to the open source community in 1999. The community subsequently merged XFS into the kernel of the Linux OS, making the file system available as an option for Linux distributions. XFS supports large files and large file systems. For a 64-bit implementation, XFS can handle file systems of up to 18 exabytes, with a maximum file size of 9 exabytes. There is no limit on the number of files.
XFS is a journaling file system and, as such, keeps track of changes in a log before committing the changes to the main file system. The advantage is guaranteed consistency of the file system and expedited recovery in the event of power failures or system crashes.