Compression level changed in v4?

[glemmestad]

Has the compression level changed for VB4?

Just comparing a few .vbk's between VB3 and VB4.
Here are my results so far:
- fileserver3 - VM Size: 56GB - Space used (in guest): 36GB - VB3 (vbk): 63GB; VB4 (vbk): 13.5GB
- fileserver4 - VM Size: 666GB - Space used (in guest): 628GB - VB3 (vbk): 625GB; VB4 (vbk): 449GB
- fileserver5 - VM Size: 75GB - Space used (in guest): 52GB - VB3 (vbk): 47GB; VB4 (vbk): 29.3GB

These are all single-VM-backupjobs (1 VM per job). Compression is default for all jobs in both VB3 and VB4 (Optimal).

Seems VB4 backups are much smaller than equivalent VB3 backups.

PS: All backups reported as Success.

[Gostev]

Even, yes and no

We gathered a lot of statistics from v3 support: typical server configurations, average CPU load during backup process, average compression ratios on real-world VM workloads for all compression ratios. We also studied the "disk space" effect when supposedly "slower" backups with high compression (all CPUs on Veeam Backup servers saturated at 100%) finish much faster than backups with low compression due to much less data to write to target storage - which is almost always a bottleneck).

Based on analysis of all this statistics, the following changes in compression algorithms and recommendations where made.

Best > Unchanged since v3
Recommended for direct from FC4 SAN backups only if Veeam Backup servers has 2 socket 8 CPU cores, otherwise CPU will be bottleneck.

Optimal > New compression level in v4
This is the default setting which should provide best compression/speed ratio for direct from FC4 SAN backups on most typical Veeam Backup servers (2-4 CPU cores).

Low > "Optimal" in v3
Very fast, low-CPU usage and low-compression algorithm (designed for, and always used for network traffic compression by CPU-limited ESX service console agents). May be good choice for Veeam Backup running in VM when CPU usage is a concern. Good compression ratios only when VM disks has lots of white space or easily compressable content.

None > Unchanged

[glemmestad]

I see.

Thanks for the clarification. I always thought CPUs were a bit underutilized on the Veeam servers, so it's good to see this new level between the old "optimal" and "best".

[Gostev]

This thread was moved here from the closed beta forum.