Whitepaper: BTRFS on ReadyNAS

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ReadyNaS® INtRoduceS the Next GeNeRatIoN of StoRaGe
One of the most significant fundamental changes in ReadyNAS® OS 6 is the file system adoption of BTRFS (pronounced
“Butter FS”). BTRFS was first developed by Oracle in 2007 to overcome scalability issues that existed with other files
systems such as EXT. Similar to many other file systems, BTRFS is a GPL-licensed file system with a community of active
developers maintaining and enhancing the core code.
ReadyNAS implementation of BTRFS is designed for:
 • Largelesandlesystems
 • Simpliedadministration
 • Integratedvolumemanagement
 • Snapshots
 • Checksumsfordataandmeta-data
F B
Built-indataintegrity:checksums
of data and meta-data
Detects data and file system corruption, improving overall stability.
File and sub volume snapshots Create lightweight copies/clones of files or entire directory structures with minimal
additionaldiskspacerequirements.Thisfeatureisespeciallyusefulincombination
with virtualization technologies for storing virtual machine images.
Online defragmentation Avoidsfragmentationwhenlotsofsmalllesarecreatedanddeletedinquicksucces-
sionandthusimprovestheoveralllesystemperformancebyreducingdiskseeks.
Online data compression ImprovedstoragecapacityandreduceddiskI/Ooperations.
Scrubbing with error correction Finds and fixes file system corruptions.
Built-in storage pools No need for additional LVM, thus improving performance.
Provisioning Abilitytogrowandshrinkavolume.
ReadyNaS commItmeNt to LeadeRShIp
File system technology will always continue to evolve. Recently the industry experienced a shi from EXT3 to EXT4; now
innovation is moving in the direction of BTRFS. As we move from generation to generation, users gain the benefits of
better data protection, higher scalability, and improved performance. ReadyNAS joins Oracle and SUSE as the first major
commercial products to ship using BTRFS:
 • Oracle’sUnbreakableEnterpriseKernelRelease2wasincludedinOracleLinux5and6(March2012)
 • SUSE’sLinuxEnterpriseServer11ServicePack2(Jan2013)
As a tested and production-ready file system, ReadyNAS users can now benefit from this major advancement with the
peaceofmindthatcomesfromknowingthelargestandmosttrustedvendorsintheindustryhavealreadyendorsed
the technology.
FormoreinformationonReadyNASOS6’snewfeatures,visitwww.netgear.com/ReadyNAS