Betrfs
What is BetrFS?

The Bε-tree File System, or BetrFS, is an in-kernel file system that uses Bε trees to organize on-disk storage. Bε trees are a write-optimized dictionary, and offer the same asymptotic behavior for sequential I/O and point queries as a B-tree. The advantage of a B ε tree is that it can also ingest small, random writes 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than B-trees and other standard on-disk data structures.

The goal of BetrFS is to realize performance that strictly dominates the performance of current, general-purpose file systems.

What is a Write-Optimized Dictionary?

Write-Optimized Dictionaries include Bε trees, Log-Structured Merge Trees (LSM Trees), and COLAs. Speaking generally, a WOD is a hierarchical structure with logarithmic search complexity (e.g., a tree), but the upper levels of the hierarchy include a log for making small, random writes durable quickly. Unlike a purely log-structured file system, the log is merged into the tree structure in a timely and organized way; these costs are included in the asymptotic analysis, and have good upper bounds.

BetrFS is an in-kernel file system, based on the opensource fractal tree implementation from Tokutek Inc. A fractal tree is a specialized variant of a B ε tree.

Find out more on our FAQ page.

Quick Start Guide

For instructions on how to setup BetrFS, follow our Quick Start Guide.

Software

Grab the code from GitHub (licensed under GPL v2).

Benchmarks

For instructions on how to age your filesystem by running through a git repository, check out our git benchmark.

People - Current

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People - Alumni

Publications

BetrFS: a compleat file system for commodity SSDs [ACM] [PDF]
Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys '22), Rennes, France, March 2022.

External-memory Dictionaries in the Affine and PDAM Models [ACM] [PDF]
ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing, Volume 8, Issue 3, Article 15, September 2021.

Copy-on-Abundant-Write for Nimble File System Clones [ACM] [PDF]
ACM Transactions on Storage, Volume 17, No 1, Article 5, January 2021.

How to Not Copy Files [USENIX]
In ;login: magazine, Volume 45, Number 3, pages 12--17, Fall 2020.

How to Copy Files [USENIX] [PDF]
Proceedings of the 18th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '20), Santa Clara, CA, February 2020.

Filesystem Aging: It’s more Usage than Fullness [USENIX] [PDF]
Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage '19), Renton, WA, July 2019.

Small Refinements to the DAM Can Have Big Consequences for Data-Structure Design
[ACM] [PDF]
Proceedings of the 31st ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA '19), Phoenix, AZ, June 2019.

Efficient Directory Mutations in a Full-Path-Indexed File System [ACM] [PDF]
ACM Transactions on Storage, Volume 14, No 3, Article 22, November 2018.

The Full Path to Full-Path Indexing [USENIX] [PDF]
In Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, Oakland, CA, February 2018. Nominated for Best Paper.

How to Fragment Your File System [USENIX]
In ;login: magazine, Volume 42, Number 2, pages 6--11, Summer 2017.

Writes Wrought Right, and Other Adventures in File System Optimization [ACM] [PDF]
ACM Transactions on Storage, Volume 13, No 1, Article 3, March 2017

File Systems Fated for Senescence? Nonsense, Says Science! [USENIX]
The 15th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '17), Santa Clara, CA, February 2017.

Lazy Analytics: Let Other Queries Do the Work For You [USENIX] [PDF]
Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage '16), Denver, CO, June 2016.

Optimizing Every Operation in a Write-Optimized File System [USENIX] [PDF]
The 14th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '16), Santa Clara, CA, February 2016. Awarded Best Paper.

BetrFS: Write-Optimization in a Kernel File System [ACM] [PDF]
ACM Transactions on Storage, Volume 11, No 4, Article 18, October 2015.

An Introduction to Bε-Trees and Write-Optimization [USENIX]
In ;login: magazine, Volume 40, Number 5, pages 22--28, October 2015.

BetrFS: A Right-Optimized Write-Optimized File System [USENIX] [Slides] [PDF]
The 13th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '15), Santa Clara, CA, February 2015.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants CNS-1408695, CNS-1408782, and CNS-1409238.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.