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Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support. Resilient File System (ReFS) overview
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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 benefitsResiliencyReFS 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:
PerformanceIn addition to providing resiliency improvements, ReFS introduces new features for performance-sensitive and virtualized workloads. Real-time tier optimization, block cloning, and sparse VDL are good examples of the evolving capabilities of ReFS, which are designed to support dynamic and diverse workloads:
ScalabilityReFS 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:
Storage SpacesDeploying 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 comparisonLimits
FunctionalityThe following features are available with ReFS and NTFS:
The following features are only available with ReFS:
The following features are unavailable on ReFS at this time:
Additional References
FeedbackSubmit and view feedback for Additional resourcesAdditional resourcesIn this articleWhich Windows 10 technology is used to store encrypted files on NTFS partitions?The Encrypting File System (EFS) on Microsoft Windows is a feature introduced in version 3.0 of NTFS that provides filesystem-level encryption. The technology enables files to be transparently encrypted to protect confidential data from attackers with physical access to the computer.
Which of one of the following partitions and volumes are natively supported by the Windows Mac and Linux operating systems?The Windows, Mac, and Linux operating system natively support reading and writing to FAT32 partitions. 1. The Windows, Mac, and Linux operating system natively support reading and writing to FAT32 partitions.
Which of the following storage space types can only be created with three or more physical disks?Two-way mirror spaces must use three or more physical disks. Three-way mirror spaces must use five or more physical disks. Parity spaces are supported on Windows Server 2012 R2, but not Windows Server 2012.
What acts as a logical container grouping multiple physical disks?A RAID controller is a device used to manage hard disk drives in a storage array. It can be used as a level of abstraction between the OS and the physical disks, presenting groups of disks as logical units. Using a RAID controller can improve performance and help protect data in case of a crash.
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