2600 DLT Compression

[slicardie]

Hi,

I have a Dell 2600 and a 110T DLT VS 80 Tape Device. How do I set it up to compress data? I can backup up to 40 GB uncompressed, but I want to compress and backup 80 GB. How do I enable hardware compression??

 

[NickFerrar]

It should default to hardware compression, what backup software are you using? You also need to bear in mind the level of compression you get is dependant on what type of data you are backing up - if it 40GB of JPG's you wouldn't really get any further compression, if it were 40GB of plain text files you'd get a lot better than 2:1 compression (we have some servers here that backup over 100GB to a DLT1 drive).

 

[slicardie]

I'm using Veritas BE 9.0. So, hardware compression as if it is software compression? I mean, when you zip a file, if it is a jpg, then you can't get any further compression (sometimes the file even gets bigger), but as you said, plain text files compress in a 2:1 ratio (or more). Then, I shouldn't worry about hardware compression, since Veritas software will have the final word, right?

 

[NickFerrar]

We use ARCserve here and make sure software compression isn't enabled in case it interferes with the hardware compression. From what I've read hardware compression is generally better/faster so given a choice leave it do hardware.