The Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) is a file layout that supports large, high

-performance RAID arrays, quick restarts without lengthy consistency checks in t

he event of a crash or power failure, and growing the filesystems size quickly.
It was designed by NetApp for use in its storage appliances.
Its author claims that WAFL is not a file system, although it includes one.[2] W
AFL provides mechanisms that enable a variety of file systems and technologies t
hat want to access disk blocks.
Contents
1 Features
2 See also
3 Notes
4 External links
Features
One of WAFL's most salient features is the snapshot, or read-only copy of the fi
le system. Zero-copy snapshots allow users to recover files that have been accid
entally deleted; they provide an online backup that can be accessed quickly. It
is implemented similarly to that of a log-structured file system. A special kind
of snapshot that the filer uses internally called a consistency point allows WA
FL to restart quickly in the event of an improper shutdown. NetApp's Data ONTAP
Release 7G operating system supports a read-write snapshot called FlexClone.
An important feature of WAFL is its support for both a Unix-style file and direc
tory model for NFS clients and a Microsoft Windows-style file and directory mode
l for SMB clients. WAFL also supports both security models, including a mode whe
re different files on the same volume can have different security attributes att
ached to them. Unix can use either[3] access control lists (ACL) or a simple bit
mask, whereas the more recent Windows model is based on access control lists. Th
ese two features make it possible to write a file to a SMB type of networked fil
esystem and access it later via NFS from a Unix workstation.
As the name suggests Write Anywhere File Layout does not store data or metadata
in pre-determined locations on disk, instead it automatically places data using
temporal locality to write metadata alongside user data in a way designed to min
imize the number of disk operations required to commit data to stable disk stora
ge using single and dual parity based RAID.
Using a data placement based on temporal locality of reference can improve the p
erformance of reading data sets which are read in a similar way to the way they
were written (e.g. a database record and its associated index entry), however it
can also cause fragmentation from the perspective of spatial locality of refere
nce. This does not adversely affect files that are sequentially written, randoml
y read, or are subsequently read using the same temporal pattern, but does affec
t sequential read after random write spatial data access patterns.
Releases of Data ONTAP since 7.3.1 have included a number of techniques to optim
ize spatial data layout such as the reallocate command to perform scheduled and
manual defragmentation, and the Write after Read volume option which detects and
automatically corrects suboptimal data access patterns caused by spatial fragme
ntation. Releases of Data ONTAP 8.1.1 include other techniques to automatically
optimize contiguous free-space within the filesystem which also helps to maintai
n optimal data layouts for most data access patterns. Prior to 7G, the wafl scan
reallocate command would need to be invoked from an advanced privilege level an
d could not be scheduled.
See also
 Comparison of file systems
List of file systems
NetApp
NetApp filer
Notes
"NetApp Volume Encryption, The Nitty Gritty".
"Is WAFL a File System?". Blogs.netapp.com. Archived from the original on July 1
5, 2014.
"POSIX Access Control Lists on Linux". Suse.de. Archived from the original o
n 2007-01-24.
External links
Official website
File System Design for an NFS File Server Appliance (PDF)
U.S. Patent 5,819,292 - Method for maintaining consistent states of a file s
ystem and for creating user-accessible read-only copies of a file system - Octob
er 6, 1998
[hide]
v t e
File systems
List of file systems Comparison of file systems Unix filesystem
Disk
ADFS AdvFS Amiga FFS Amiga OFS APFS AthFS BFS
Be File System Boot File System Btrfs DFS EFS
Encrypting File System Extent File System Episode ext
ext2 ext3 ext3cow ext4 FAT
exFAT Files-11 Fossil HAMMER HFS HFS+ HPFS HTFS IBM General Parallel Fil
e System JFS LFS MFS
Macintosh File System Tivo Media File System MINIX NetWare File System N
ext3 NILFS
NILFS2 NSS NTFS OneFS PFS QFS QNX4FS ReFS ReiserFS
Reiser4 Reliance Reliance Nitro RFS SFS Soup (Apple) Tux3 UBIFS UFS VxFS
WAFL Xiafs XFS Xsan zFS ZFS
Optical disc

HSF ISO 9660 ISO 13490 UDF

Flash memory and SSD

APFS FAT exFAT CHFS TFAT FFS2 F2FS HPFS JFFS JFFS2 JFS LogFS NILFS
NILFS2 NVFS YAFFS UBIFS
Distributed

CXFS GFS2 Google File System OCFS2 OrangeFS PVFS QFS Xsan more...
NAS
AFS (OpenAFS) AFP Coda DFS GPFS Google File System Lustre NCP NFS POHMELFS H
adoop SMB (CIFS) SSHFS more...
Specialized
Aufs AXFS Boot File System CDfs Compact Disc File System cramfs Davfs2 FTPFS
FUSE GmailFS Lnfs LTFS MVFS SquashFS UMSDOS OverlayFS UnionFS WBFS
Pseudo and virtual

configfs devfs debugfs kernfs procfs specfs sysfs tmpfs WinFS

Encrypted

eCryptfs EncFS EFS Rubberhose SSHFS ZFS

Types
Clustered
Global Grid Self-certifying Flash Journaling Log-structured Object Recor
d-oriented Semantic Steganographic Synthetic Versioning
Features
Case preservation Data deduplication Data scrubbing Execute in place Extent
File attribute
Extended file attributes File change log Fork Links
Hard Symbolic
Access control

Access control list Filesystem-level encryption Permissions

Modes Sticky bit
Interfaces
File manager File system API
Installable File System Virtual file system
Categories:
Disk file systems