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Don't use btrfs if you need RAID 5 or 6.
https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#raid56-status-and-recommended-practices
I've got raid 6 at the base level and LVM for partitioning and ext4 filesystem for a k8s setup. Based on this, btrfs doesn't provide me with any advantages that I don't already have at a lower level.
Additionaly, for my system, btrfs uses more bits per file or something such that I was running out of disk space vs ext4. Yeah, I can go buy more disks, but I like to think that I'm running at peak efficiency, using all the bits, with no waste.
Well yeah, because it's supposed to replace those lower levels.
Also, BTRFS does provide advantages over ext4, such as snapshots, which I think are fantastic since I can recover if things go sideways. I don't know what your use-case is, so I don't know if the features BTRFS provides would be valuable to you.
Generally, if a lower level can do a thing, I prefer to have the lower level do it. It's not really a reason, just a rule of thumb. I like to think that the lower level is more efficient to do the thing.
I use LVM snapshots to do my backups. I don't have any other reason for it.
That all being said, I'm using btrfs on one system and if I really like it, I may migrate to it. It does seem a whole lot simpler to have one thing to learn than all the layers.
Yup, I used to use LVM, but the two big NAS filesystems have a ton of nice features and they expect to control the disk management. I looked into BTRFS and ZFS, and since BTRFS is native to Linux (some of my SW doesn't support BSD) and I don't need anything other than RAID mirror, that's what I picked.
I used LVM at work for simple RAID 0 systems where long term uptime was crucial and hardware swaps wouldn't likely happen (these were treated like IOT devices), and snapshots weren't important. It works well. But if you want extra features (file-level snapshots, compression, volume quotas, etc), BTRFS and ZFS make that way easier.
I have no problem running it with raid 5/6. The important thing is to have a UPS.
I've been running a btrfs storage array with data on raid5 and metadata I believe raid1 for the last 5 or so years and have yet to have a problem because of it. I did unfortunately learn not to fully trust the windows btrfs driver but was fortunately able to restore from backups and redownloading.
I wouldn't hesitate to set it up again for myself or anybody else, and adding a UPS would be icing on the cake. (I added UPS to my setup this last summer)
Or run the raid 5 or 6 separately, with hardware raid or mdadm
Even for simple mirroring there's an argument to be made for running it separately from btrfs using mdadm. You do lose the benefit of btrfs being able to automatically pick the valid copy on localised corruption, but the admin tools are easier to use and more proven in a case of full disk failure, and if you run an encrypted block device you need to encrypt half as much stuff.