The ReFS file system (which stands for resilient file system) is one of the latest additions to Microsoft‘s Windows operating system, and is designed to replace the well-known and widely used NTFS in some cases. In this article, we are going to tell you what this new file system consists of, how it differs from NTFS and, of course, we will tell you if it is worth using it or not.
According to Microsoft, ReFS was designed to cope with new data growth scenarios and as a foundation for future innovations, and its premise is that it can manage and ensure data integrity for large amounts of storage through what they have called “resilience. “to data corruption. Let’s see what it consists of.
What is ReFS and what is data corruption resistance?
Although it sounds like something new, this file system was actually introduced with Windows Server 2012 and later with Windows 8, so obviously it is also available in Windows 10. Since its first version, many new features have been introduced, and compared to NTFS it presents characteristics key that aim to improve your resistance to data corruption, improve performance and obviously improve the scalability of the data, something that is closely related to Big Data .
The file system of any storage unit is what allows the operating system to allocate space to files among many other things, and it depends on this that an operating system “understands” what is on a hard drive, for example.
Resistance, performance and scalability, the advantages of ReFS
ReFS introduces new features to improve resistance to data corruption by accurately detecting data corruption so that it can be corrected “on the fly”. In other words, with this file system it is possible to detect and correct data corruption errors in the storage units without the user having to intervene at all, automatically and without downtime.
- Integrity stream : ReFS uses checksums for both metadata and file data, enabling reliable detection of file corruption issues.
- Storage Spaces feature integration : When used in conjunction with RAID 1 systems, this file system can automatically repair detected errors using the copy of the data provided by the RAID system.
- Proactive error correction : in addition to validating all data before any read and write operations, a data integrity scanner known as a debugger is introduced that periodically scans the storage volume to identify latent corruptions and proactively trigger their repair.
In terms of performance , this file system also introduces new enhancements specific to virtualized and performance-sensitive workloads. Real-time tier optimization, block cloning, and sparse VDL are just a few examples of ReFS capabilities, designed to handle dynamic and diverse loads.
- Mirror Accelerated Parity – Delivers high performance and more efficient data storage by dividing a volume into two logical storage groups known as tiers. These can have their own units and resistance types, allowing each level to optimize its performance or capacity.
- Virtual Machine Enhancement : ReFS introduces new features specifically designed to improve performance on Hyper-V virtual machines.
- Block Cloning – Speeds up copy operations, enabling virtual machine checkpoint merge operations with less impact and faster.
- Sparse VLD : allows zero files (zero padding) reducing the time it takes to create fixed VHDs (virtual disks) from minutes to seconds.
- Cluster size : Supports 4K and 64K cluster sizes (respectively recommended for normal scenarios and recommended for large sequential workloads).
Finally, ReFS is designed to support large data sets (we are talking millions of terabytes) without impacting performance, resulting in the highest scalability of a file system to date.
When is it advisable to use this file system?
Microsoft exposes some of the scenarios in which the use of ReFS is recommended and guarantees the advantages that we have explained above:
- Direct storage spaces (Storage Spaces): Conceptually it is a software RAID.
- Common disks and backups : On common network disks for multiple users, as well as backup disks, the benefits of ReFS become apparent.
- Virtual machine systems : as we have explained before, this is a file system very oriented towards virtualization and therefore the storage of snapshots and virtual machines that need to have many I / O operations will be highly benefited.
Limitations
To finish, let’s see what limitations the ReFS file system has compared to NTFS:
| Characteristic | ReFS | NTFS |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum file name length | 255 unicode characters | 255 unicode characters |
| Maximum path length | 32K unicode characters | 32K unicode characters |
| Maximum file size | 35 Petabytes | 8 Petabytes |
| Maximum volume size | 35 Petabytes | 8 Petabytes |