Now that ReFS is production-grade, I'm dealing with a backup migration "challenge".
I have a Scaleout repository with many extents. I want to be able to empty them and format them to ReFS, but they are huge (50-200TB each). I've also used some temporary stockage (150TB) I borrowed from another project, this time in ReFS format which, if I use extent evacuation, crashes the server under heavy load.
My suggestion is to be able to "tip" the extent selection algorithm to mark which extents are preferred over the others or to just stop using one of the extents as target. This way, the data will automatically expire and I will be able to remove the extent without backup downtime (maintenance mode) or SLA violations (disabling jobs to be able to move data quickly enough).
So, I see two possible implementations:
- Implement extent priority (complex). The preferred extents will be used before the others with lower priority.
- Content expiration flag (easy). The extens will be as usual, but the extent selection algorithm will ignore the ones with the "content expiration" flag as a backup target.
Best regards