diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 11b4979df58..fa46641f0b6 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -12,6 +12,9 @@ Release 2.0.1-alpha - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-3042. Automatic failover support for NameNode HA (todd)
     (see dedicated section below for breakdown of subtasks)
 
+    HADOOP-8135. Add ByteBufferReadable interface to FSDataInputStream. (Henry
+    Robinson via atm)
+
   IMPROVEMENTS
 
     HADOOP-8340. SNAPSHOT build versions should compare as less than their eventual
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/ByteBufferReadable.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/ByteBufferReadable.java
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..f47269c9c97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/ByteBufferReadable.java
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+/**
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+ * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+ * distributed with this work for additional information
+ * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+ * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+ * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+ * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+package org.apache.hadoop.fs;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
+
+/**
+ * Implementers of this interface provide a read API that writes to a
+ * ByteBuffer, not a byte[].
+ */
+public interface ByteBufferReadable {
+  /**
+   * Reads up to buf.remaining() bytes into buf. Callers should use
+   * buf.limit(..) to control the size of the desired read.
+   *
+   * After the call, buf.position() should be unchanged, and therefore any data
+   * can be immediately read from buf.
+   *
+   * Many implementations will throw {@link UnsupportedOperationException}, so
+   * callers that are not confident in support for this method from the
+   * underlying filesystem should be prepared to handle that exception.
+   *
+   * @param buf
+   *          the ByteBuffer to receive the results of the read operation
+   * @return the number of bytes available to read from buf
+   * @throws IOException if there is some error performing the read
+   */
+  public int read(ByteBuffer buf) throws IOException;
+}
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/FSDataInputStream.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/FSDataInputStream.java
index b93506c638d..3b14cc77e1f 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/FSDataInputStream.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/FSDataInputStream.java
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 package org.apache.hadoop.fs;
 
 import java.io.*;
+import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
 
 import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceAudience;
 import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceStability;
@@ -27,7 +28,7 @@ import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceStability;
 @InterfaceAudience.Public
 @InterfaceStability.Stable
 public class FSDataInputStream extends DataInputStream
-    implements Seekable, PositionedReadable, Closeable {
+    implements Seekable, PositionedReadable, Closeable, ByteBufferReadable {
 
   public FSDataInputStream(InputStream in)
     throws IOException {
@@ -116,4 +117,12 @@ public class FSDataInputStream extends DataInputStream
   public InputStream getWrappedStream() {
     return in;
   }
+
+  public int read(ByteBuffer buf) throws IOException {
+    if (in instanceof ByteBufferReadable) {
+      return ((ByteBufferReadable)in).read(buf);
+    }
+
+    throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Byte-buffer read unsupported by input stream");
+  }
 }