RHEL 7.2 | req. assist with using btrfs on a raid 50, 16TB array, one volume only.

I am seeking advice on potentially using btrfs for an ftp server that has a hardware raid 50 (seven raid 3s with a stripe, and a global hot spare).

We will only have one volume, we will never add additional volumes.

We recognize that btrfs is a technology preview, and the risks involved. We found the documentation at access.redhat.com/documentation...., yet the first (and only) thing it says to do is at paragraph 3.1 to do the following:

# mkfs.btrfs /dev/device

And there is no mention of using parted prior to make the partition in that documentation for btrfs.

I'm kickstarting the system right now, and plan on adding the 16TB array afterwards.

Has anyone ever added a btrfs hardware raid with only one volume (btrfs allows sub-volumes, but we don't need that for this specific use). The ftp server gets a lot of traffic in terms of files being written to, and then the files are sent elsewhere via scp. The files are generally "bigger" with the least sizes ranging in the kilobytes, and larger files as big as 64GB, give or take 10GB or so-ish, along with files smaller than that generally ranging in the GB sizes.

After looking at the documentation I linked to above, I'd appreciate any practical help if partitioning needs to be done prior (I'd personally be surprised if it didn't), and we'd probably use parted first, but the documentation mentions +nothing+ about that. We then just want to make one huge volume taking the entire raid50 with no sub-volumes and no other volumes to be added later, ever.

Thanks