IBM v7000 Compressed LUN - Veeam Backup Repository

[guillermo.lozano]

Hello Community, im wondering if anyone can help me with this question:

I have an IBM v7000 Storwize in which i need to create a LUN over an RAID 6 array to store vmware veeam backups.

The v7000 allows me to create a LUN with a hardware compression feature.

Is it recommended to create a backup repository on such LUN?

Thanks
Guillermo.-

[veremin]

One thing that should be kept in mind in case of using storage devices with hardware compression: don’t forget to select "no compression" level in VB&R console.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[chrisdearden]

Compression aside - you may find that RAID 6 doesn't work out as well as it usually would, especially when you run reverse incrementals, which have a high proportion of writes. Comparing with a RAID 10 volume , the overheads on write are going to be more.

[guillermo.lozano]

Hello, thank you both for the quick answer.

As i understand, it may be more useful to just use a standard LUN over RAID 5 with VB&R compression?

Regards,
Guillermo.-

[veremin]

It stands to reason testing both of the possible ways and comparing results you get.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[guillermo.lozano]

ok, thank you Vladimir. i'll try to test both scenarios and post the results.

Regards,
Guillermo.-

[dellock6]

I've used compressed LUNs in a V7000 at a customers, based however on Raid5 volumes. They are using those LUNs to store VMFS vmware volumes in order to "park" VMs with really little I/O. With the same type of disks (sas 10k rpm, 450 Gb) there is a huge amount of difference between the compressed and non compressed volumes, I do not have any numbers to show but as has already been said, at least avoid Raid6 and go for Raid5.
About the raid10 suggestion, to me is a non sense: compressed volume is designed in StoreWize storage to save space for non-heavily-utilized LUNs, wasting disks with raid10 basically eliminates any advantage of the compressed volume itself.

Luca.

[guillermo.lozano]

Great info. Thanks Luca!