TIF, JPG - Storage efficiency

[SANALERT]

What are customers generally seeing with regards to volume efficiency when using block storage to house Windows servers housing generally 50% of TIFF and JPG files on a volume?

[CHRISMAKI]

I don't believe you're going to see much compression at all on either the TIFF or JPG files. TIFF files don't compress much, if at all and JPG are already compressed I believe. ONTAP can use either LZO Pro or GZIP compression algorithms, you could try compressing your files with utilities that use these same algorithms to determine compressibility. I think what you'll find is that the only way to compress these file types is at the expense of quality, typically people are keeping TIFF files because they want to retain quality. No storage company should tell you differently either. 

[paul_stejskal · Accepted solution]

ONTAP uses 4 methods of storage efficiency: 1) vol dedupe, 2) vol compression, 3) compaction, 4) cross volume dedupe/compaction. I may have missed one, but it combines those together. Windows doesn't do that for sure. You'll want to use AFF to take advantage of it though as running any kind of compression on spinning rust is a pain point in terms of performance.

[TMACMD]

Efficiency operations are in this order, when applicable:

1. Zero block dedupe (eliminate zero blocks from the write stream)
2. Use Adaptive Compression when possible
3. Dedupe what is left
4. Data Compaction (combine very small files into fewer ONTAP data blocks)

[snapguedes]

Thanks for that info my friend! Please, where we can find some doc arround LZO/GZIP supportability?

[paul_stejskal]

snapguedes, can you please explain? ONTAP stores those kinds of files just fine.

[snapguedes]

Hi @paul_stejskal 

It was mentioned in a previous comment that ONTAP can use either LZO Pro or GZIP compression algorithms. I am wondering whether it is documented somewhere. I friend of mine needs that info for an RFP.

Best,

Rafael Guedes

[paul_stejskal]

Not really. The best I could find is in this KB: https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting%2FData_Protection_and_Security%2FSnapMirror%2FSnapMirror_storage_efficiency_configurations_and_behavi...

The command is documented here: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-select/concept_stor_eff_support.html (volume efficiency modify is listed as sis config, which is old 7-mode syntax).

If this is for a RFP, I would ask more details from your account team.