The Btrfs file system is designed to meet the expanding scalability requirements of large storage subsystems. Because the Btrfs file system uses B-trees in its implementation, its name is derived from the name of those data structures, although it is not a true acronym. A B-tree is a tree-like data structure that enables file systems and databases to efficiently access and update large blocks of data, irrespective of how large the tree grows.

The Btrfs file system provides the following important features:

• Copy-on-write functionality, which enables you to create both readable and writable snapshots and roll back a file system to a previous state, even after converting it from an ext3 or ext4 file system.

• Checksum functionality, which ensures data integrity.

• Snapshots send and receive for remote incremental backups.

• Transparent compression, which saves disk space.

• Transparent defragmentation for improved performance.

• Integrated, logical volume management, which enables you to implement RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID1C3 or RAID1C4 configurations, and dynamically add or remove storage capacity.

For more information, visit https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/.

For an overview of local file system management, see About File System Management.