IronPort Shutdown/Reboot Procedure

Resilient File System (ReFS)

ReFS (Resilient File System) is a new file system initially intended for file servers that improves on NTFS in Windows Server. ReFS (Resilient File System), is built on the foundations of NTFS, so it maintains crucial compatibility while at the same time it has been architected and engineered for a new generation of storage technologies and scenarios. ReFS is better and faster in many ways than NTFS.

Key Features of ReFS:-

ReFS Supports Long File Names and File Path:- No longer be a limitation of 255 characters for a long file name. A file name in ReFS can be up to 32,768 unicode characters long. The limitation on full path size has also been updated from 255 characters for the total path size to 32K (32,768). NTFS had a maximum volume size of 16 Exabytes, but ReFS format allows a maximum volume size of 262,144 Exabytes.

ReFS is Much Better at Handling Power Outages:- One big difference in how NTFS and ReFS are different is in the way they update the metadata.

NTFS performs like metadata updates, which means that the metadata is updated “in-place.” The metadata says your new folder is named “New Folder,” and then you rename it to “Downloaded Files.” When you make the change, the actual metadata itself is written over. When a power outage occurs at the time you are updating a disk, the metadata can be partially or completely overwritten, causing data corruption.

ReFS does not update the metadata in-place. Instead, it creates a new copy of the metadata, and only once the new copy of the metadata is intact and all the writes have taken place does the file update itself with the new metadata. There are further improvements to the way that ReFS handles writes to the metadata, but for the most part the other changes are performance improvements. This new way of updating metadata allows you to reliably and consistently recover from power outages without disk corruption.

ReFS works with Storage Spaces to Better Detect and Repair Problems:- ReFS can be used without Storage Spaces, and Storage Spaces can be used without ReFS, but when they are used together, both ReFS and Storage Spaces both work more effectively. Storage Spaces uses mirroring, spreading copies of data across multiple physical data drives. When Storage Spaces finds a problem with even one piece of corrupt data on a drive, the corrupt data will be removed from the drive, and will be replaced with a known good copy of the data from another one of the physical drives.

ReFS uses checksums on the metadata to ensure that the data has not been corrupted. When Storage Spaces finds mismatched data between two or more copies of the same file, it can rely on the built-in metadata checksums that are a feature of ReFS. Once the checksums are validated, the correct data is copied back to the other physical drives, and the corrupted data is removed.

ReFS Volumes can Stay Live even if they have Irreparable Corrupted Data:- If NTFS has small amount of data corruption can cause big problems , But In ReFS you are much less likely to have problems. In a case where a system is not using Storage Spaces and mirroring, or if for some strange reason one part of the data across the whole mirror is corrupt, only the corrupt parts will be removed from the volume, and the volume itself will stay active.