Aggregate Level Deduplication on FAS systems

[HENRY2006]

Hi,

I would like to know if Aggregate level deduplication will be available for disk based aggregates, as opposed to AFF systems.

Thanks

Henry

[Ontapforrum · Accepted solution]

Hi,

As of now it's only available on AFF system, as it requires more processing power and faster disk (ssd)at global dedupe level, it is best suited for AFF system.

[HENRY2006]

Thanks. I was guessing that would be the case.

For my problem, high performance is not an issue.

What happens is that we have volumes snapvaulted in 7 mode, and in order to save space, we have created clones so we can continue the snapvault without creating a baseline

As we are migrating  these volumes to cDOT, we have to undo the clones, which would hydrate the data and remove any savings we are having. 

In the future, even if the snapshot count has been increased, it seems aggregate deduplication is a better option than cloning from a long term perspective

Thanks again

Henry

[Ontapforrum]

I agree!

I think aggregate-level deduplication is a massive saver and it compliments SSD, b'cos it means you will need lesser SSDs to store same amount of data. However, b'cos the dedupe is at the aggregate level, which means deciding whether to have dedupe enabled or not on a performance centric volume will no longer be a choice. Unless you have serious doubts about the future perfomance impact and stakes are high, then you will be forced to create a dedicated aggregate and put all the non-performance centric volumes on it.

I guess the game changer is the SSDs & Multi-core CPUs systems (AFF) for Aggregate-level-dedupe.

[HENRY2006]

Thanks

At this moment, the value of SSD for archiving is not there yet to move data to SSD.

In my circumstance, the volumes we are snapvaulting are expected to have over 7 year retention periods, and I think moving them to SSD does not provide sufficient value. I think it will be in the future, as SSD sizes are much larger than NL-SAS, so eventually, pricing per TB will decrease

Of course, we could move to other Ontap technologies, such as Altavault, but for now, I think snapvault provides a simple enough environment for us to think outside the box

Henry

[Ontapforrum]

I understand and it's a valid point. 

Perhaps, b'cos of this issue NetApp came up with this tiering feature in 9.6, which enables you to keep hot data on a NetApp AFF system and to tier cold data to low-cost cloud tiers, which means a good ROI on SSDs for long term basis. But then the key word is 'cold' data.