Performance

Performance issues with nfs-root filesystems and nfs mounted filesystems will rarely be a critical problem for embedded systems, as such a setup is never suitable for a mission-critical system or a system with high-security demands. Nfs-server and client in the Linux kernel is very tolerant towards even quite long network interruptions (even a few minutes of complete disconnection normally will be managed correctly), but this tolerance does not eliminate the performance problems and nfs-root definitely is only suitable for systems where the data-volume transfered is low. A special case might be using nfs-root filesystems for development purposes, this is a common choice, as it eliminates resource constraints related to storage media and simplifies development. Development on nfs-root filesystems, though, must exclude benchmarking and reliability tests as the results definitely will be wrong. A stable nfs-root environment can offer a filesystem bandwidth well above a flash-media. On the other hand heavy nfs-traffic on an instable network or a highly loaded network will show false-negative results.