Samba Server-Side Copy Offload

I recently implemented server-side copy offload support for Samba 4.1, along with Btrfs filesystem specific enhancements. This video compares server-side copy performance with traditional copy methods.

A few notes on the demonstration:

• The Windows Server 2012 client and Samba server are connected via an old 100 Mb/s switch, which obviously acts as a network throughput bottleneck in the traditional copy demonstration.
• The Samba server resembles the 4.1.0 code-base, but includes an extra patch to disable server-side copy requests on the regular share.

Many thanks to:

• My colleagues at SUSE Linux, for supporting my implementation efforts.
• The Samba Team, particularly Metze and Jeremy, for reviewing the code.
• Kdenlive developers, for writing a great video editing suite.

Update (July, 2014): Usage is now fully documented on the Samba Wiki.