Backup to Tape, decompress?

[b.vanhaastrecht]

Hi,

We are implementing VTL from a DXi deduplication unit. Compared to CIFS and NFS, it really flies and no dedupe unfriendly transform!

In order to get maximum deduplication from the DXi, I would like to know if Veeam decompresses and re-hydrate its back-upped data when writing to tape.

kind Regards,
Bastiaan

[foggy]

Backup files are copied to tapes as is, however you can set backup jobs to decompress data before writing backup files into repository that is used as a source for the tape jobs.

[b.vanhaastrecht]

Yes off course, but that would mean more local expensive storage needed. Any change in behavior with v8? Otherwise this feature, decompress before storing to VTL tape (on dedupe unit) would sound like a nice feature enhancement.

[foggy]

No changes regarding that in v8, but thanks for the feedback.

[mc2]

Just wondering if this functionality will be available in 9.5?

We had been using Windows dedupe for the initial backup target but found that was a bit of a struggle to manage so we now use veeam's native compression dedupe. We use a Quadstor VTL appliance which uses dedupe as a monthly "Offline" copy. Problem is the backup copy is hitting this compressed/deduped so we are struggling to get decent dedupe ratios.

6 copies of very similar data and we are only getting 1.8:1. I suspect if the data was not compressed we would get 4:1 or higher

[Dima P.]

mc2,

To clarify, you would like to decompress the existing backup file prior placing in to tape?

[mc2]

sorry for the very delayed response.

Yes we would like the compressed backup to be decompressed when being written to tape

In our case a VTL which is handling the compression/deduplication

[veremin]

The functionality is not included in 9.5 version.

What I'd suggest is to turn off compression on source backup job, archive backups to tapes, using VTL compression and compare the data reduction ratios.

Thanks.

[shivaram.u]

Just wondering if this functionality will be available in 9.5?

We had been using Windows dedupe for the initial backup target but found that was a bit of a struggle to manage so we now use veeam's native compression dedupe. We use a Quadstor VTL appliance which uses dedupe as a monthly "Offline" copy. Problem is the backup copy is hitting this compressed/deduped so we are struggling to get decent dedupe ratios.

6 copies of very similar data and we are only getting 1.8:1. I suspect if the data was not compressed we would get 4:1 or higher

From quadstor here. Do you see any improvement in the ratios by turning off compression for the source backups ?

For effective dedupe you would need compression to be turned off at the source. The ratios indicates very little deduplication. Also the VTL by default uses a 256k block size for hash computation which is on the higher side for VM backups and requires some fine tuning. You could contact me off list or contact us (the email id is on the website) and we can check if anything needs to be done on the VTL side

-Thanks