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ZFS NFS Share as backup pool
Hello.
I have a Solaris 11 x86 machine with an attached iscsi storage which is formatted with ZFS and dedup=on.
This volume is shared through NFS to my NetWorker server and added in NMC as a adv_file device and pool.
When backing up clients to this volume, we dont see any dedup factor increasing in the zfs filesystem.
What could be the cause of this? The only place I found in NMC that had to do with Encryption was in the "Cloud" tab of the Device Properties, which we set to "none".
Regards,
Martin
coganb
736 Posts
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February 16th, 2012 07:00
Hi Martin,
This configuration hasn't been qualified by the NetWorker development people yet, so it's not a supported scenario. I wouldn't recommend backing up to that without having this OK'd by EMC, just to be sure that there wasn't going to be any problems. As regards the dedup ratio, I guess you'd have to look into the zfs dedup documentation to see what kind of data dedupes well and what doesn't.
-Bobby
netcamp1
8 Posts
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February 16th, 2012 10:00
Hello Bobby.
To clarify, you mean backing up to an nfs mounted volume is not a supported way for NetWorker to store data?
Anyone else having experiencing / tested zfs dedup and NetWorker?
coganb
736 Posts
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February 16th, 2012 23:00
Hi Martin,
I was referring specifically to using ZFS with dedupe on as an AFTD.
-Bobby
nicbone
116 Posts
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February 23rd, 2012 07:00
I tried it as soon as dedupe became available in OpenSolaris as it was back then. I thought i was going to get some big gains as we use a few big FC SAN AFTD's here.
I got no dedupe ratio from it and raised it here. I had to assume in the end it had to do with the format Networker uses to store the data on a AFTD.
The dedupe itself worked fine from an OS persepective e.g. put some similiar files in the file system and saw the "right" dedupe ratio.
However - when using it as an AFTD got no dedupe.
If you search the forum you should find the thread or i will try and attach it her somehow.
netcamp1
8 Posts
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February 23rd, 2012 12:00
Thanks for your input Nicholas.
So, basically, this never worked for you either? Anything else in than thread that can be of use for me?
Regards,
Martin
nicbone
116 Posts
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February 24th, 2012 02:00
Martin
Yes it was a while ago now so had to reread to refresh myself - i couldnt see how to attach the discussion here but a search of the forum with keywords zfs and dedupe bring it up.
Have a look and see if you agree with the outcome of that. Suggestions were that it was an alignment issue but i'm still not certain. Is the methodology of ZFS dedupe so different from say DataDomain where dedupe obviously does bring benefits? I would be interested to hear.
I'm subscribed to the zfs-discuss email group for a long time now and having seen some of the issues people have seen with large dedupe enabled zfs pools i dont think its really suitable (even if good ratios could be achieved) for that sort of production use.
regards
Nick