Enable tape hardware compression or not?


Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi all!

I stumbled across an older post from Tom Sightler here: https://forums.veeam.com/post137077.html#p137077

The content still holds true and to summarise:

  • If using LTO5 or older (which hopefully no one is doing for new deployments): Disable hardware compression unless your Veeam backups have compression disabled
  • For LTO6 and newer: Keep hardware compression enabled but don’t expect big savings, maybe put 2.6-2.7 TB on a 2.5 TB media.

The reason it makes sense to keep it on is the new algorithm recognises already compressed data and passes it through.


6 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Ok… I have turned off the hardware compression with Veeam data up to now.

We have turned on the Veeam compression for all backups, so I think it's quite useless to turn on even if the algorithm recognizes compressed data….

Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Ok… I have turned off the hardware compression with Veeam data up to now.

We have turned on the Veeam compression for all backups, so I think it's quite useless to turn on even if the algorithm recognizes compressed data….

same as Joe, what about the performance i ifcompression is enabled on hardware for a little gain of space?

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Performance should not be a big difference. The hardware compression - at least with the IBM drives - is really good…

I have not that much experience with drives from HP and others….

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

We leave the hardware compression on and not turn on Veeam compression.  Not much savings really.

Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I have pretty decent servers and leave hardware compression off on my LTO8’s as Veeam already compresses it. Perhaps I’ll do a side by side comparison to see what the differences are between Veeam only, Hardware only, and both.  

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

I have pretty decent servers and leave hardware compression off on my LTO8’s as Veeam already compresses it. Perhaps I’ll do a side by side comparison to see what the differences are between Veeam only, Hardware only, and both.  

I will do a test with hardware compression on and Veeam compression off next month, too. 😎 It's just interesting to compare these numbers.

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