The Resilient File System (ReFS) is Microsoft's newest file system, designed to maximize data availability, scale efficiently to large data sets across diverse workloads, and provide data integrity with resiliency to corruption. It seeks to address an expanding set of storage scenarios and establish a foundation for future innovations.
Key benefits ResiliencyReFS introduces new features that can precisely detect corruptions and also fix those corruptions while remaining online, helping provide increased integrity and availability for your data:
In addition to providing resiliency improvements, ReFS introduces new features for performance-sensitive and virtualized workloads. Real-time tier optimization, block cloning, and sparse valid data length (VDL) are good examples of the evolving capabilities of ReFS, which are designed to support dynamic and diverse workloads:
Mirror-accelerated parity - Mirror-accelerated parity delivers both high performance and also capacity efficient storage for your data.
To deliver both high performance and capacity efficient storage, ReFS divides a volume into two logical storage groups, known as tiers. These tiers can have their own drive and resiliency types, allowing each tier to optimize for either performance or capacity. Some example configurations include:
Performance tier Capacity tier Mirrored SSD Mirrored HDD Mirrored SSD Parity SSD Mirrored SSD Parity HDDOnce these tiers are configured, ReFS uses them to deliver fast storage for hot data and capacity-efficient storage for cold data:
Note
For Windows Server deployments, mirror-accelerated parity is only supported on Storage Spaces Direct. We recommend using mirror-accelerated parity with archival and backup workloads only. For virtualized and other high performance random workloads, we recommend using three-way mirrors for better performance.
Accelerated VM operations - ReFS introduces new functionality specifically targeted to improve the performance of virtualized workloads:
Variable cluster sizes - ReFS supports both 4K and 64K cluster sizes. 4K is the recommended cluster size for most deployments, but 64K clusters are appropriate for large, sequential IO workloads.
ReFS is designed to support extremely large data sets - millions of terabytes - without negatively impacting performance, achieving greater scale than prior file systems.
Supported deploymentsMicrosoft has developed NTFS specifically for general-purpose use with a wide range of configurations and workloads. For customers specially requiring the availability, resiliency, and/or scale that ReFS provides, Microsoft supports ReFS for use with the following configurations and scenarios:
Note
All ReFS supported configurations must use Windows Server Catalog certified hardware and meet application requirements.
Storage Spaces DirectDeploying ReFS on Storage Spaces Direct is recommended for virtualized workloads or network-attached storage:
Deploying ReFS on Storage Spaces with shared SAS enclosures is suitable for hosting archival data and storing user documents:
Note
Storage Spaces supports local non-removable direct-attached via BusTypes SATA, SAS, NVME, or attached via HBA (also known as RAID controller in pass-through mode).
Basic disksDeploying ReFS on basic disks is best suited for applications that implement their own software resiliency and availability solutions:
Note
Basic disks include local non-removable direct-attached via BusTypes SATA, SAS, NVME, or RAID. Basic disks do not include Storage Spaces.
Backup targetDeploying ReFS as a backup target is best suited for applications and hardware that implements its own resiliency and availability solutions:
Note
Backup targets include the above supported configurations. Please contact application and storage array vendors for support details on Fiber Channel and iSCSI SANs. For SANs, if features such as thin provisioning, TRIM/UNMAP, or Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) are required, NTFS must be used.
Feature comparison Limits Feature ReFS NTFS Maximum file name length 255 Unicode characters 255 Unicode characters Maximum path name length 32K Unicode characters 32K Unicode characters Maximum file size 35 PB (petabytes) 256 TB Maximum volume size 35 PB 256 TB Functionality The following features are available with ReFS and NTFS: Feature ReFS NTFS BitLocker encryption Yes Yes Data Deduplication Yes1 Yes Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) support Yes2 3 Yes Junctions/Soft links Yes Yes Hard links Yes4 Yes Failover cluster support Yes Yes Access-control lists Yes Yes USN journal Yes Yes Changes notifications Yes Yes Junction points Yes Yes Mount points Yes Yes Reparse points Yes Yes Volume snapshots Yes Yes File IDs Yes Yes Oplocks Yes Yes Sparse files Yes Yes Named streams Yes Yes Thin Provisioning Yes5 Yes Trim/Unmap Yes5 Yes Page file support Yes6 YesRetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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