I’ve always wondered, given the warnings in documentation, if there are any people brave enough to try Btrfs in a RAID5/6 configuration. Has anyone here actually tried it with “real” data?
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it’s still unstable and shouldn’t be used for anything except testing
It depends on what you call “real” data.
I find it good enough for home NAS that serve as jellyfin instance and store a hell lot of stuff. Things I would rather keep, but anything really critical is stored on several computers.
Works well so far (about 4 or 5 years already now) with raid5 for data but raid1 for metadata.
If the devs say “unstable”, it’s probably unstable.
Yes.
I’d like to hear more. Are you still using it? What’s kind of data do/did you store on it?
Yes, as in, there were people using Btrfs RAID 5/6. It didn’t end well. Not that I’ve used it - I very much prefer having my data safe.
The warnings in the docs are there for a reason - those modes of Btrfs simply aren’t finished and thus aren’t fit to be used.
You can test this yourself easily in a VM, this will let you see how things fail for Btrfs 5/6 when one of the disks “fails”.
I tried it probably a decade ago and it ended badly.
The last time I checked it seemed like “the powers that be” running btrfs had shifted focus away from raid 5/6 because enterprises didn’t care about it.
Given how flexible RAID1 in btrfs is, I don’t really see any benefit in using RAID5/6.
Some people in the comments of this claims to use it with real data https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.2-Btrfs-EXT4
If you use it don’t forget to use RAID1 for metadata
