I think this might make sense under two cases: 1. If you have some
specialized application that uses its own proprietary compression
routines and might adversely suffer if you attempted to then re-compress
that on the hardware -- I've heard this can actually increase the size
of the compressed file if you then try to re-compress it, although one
previous reply claimed that this is not true and that the hardware will
not attempt to compress compressed data. Huh?, how does it know or care?
Seems to me it will darn well do what it pleases. In other words, if you
don't have it explicitly turned off on the hardware (don't know how to
do that), it will attempt to do it, but what do I know. 2. If you have a
really slow network and very slow bandwidth. In this case, if the
clients compress the data before sending the data over the wire, you're
dealing with less overall traffic. This was more true, though, in the
past and I think this reason is less viable in today's higher speed
shops. Also, the downside to case 2 is that client side compression
places a large memory load on the client, never mind the fact that the
backups are already beating on the poor machine.
George
Jim Lane wrote:
>
> Hi, All
>
> I recently had a contractor/consultant onsite to review my Networker
> setup. among other things he insisted that using hardware compression on
> a tape library is a "bad thing". the closest thing to an explanation I
> ever heard was that it might cause data loss somehow and that Legato
> wouldn't help me if it did. since contractors have a better relationship
> with management than I do he just called STK onsite and had them turn
> compression off on my 9710. I'm wondering if anybody out there has ever
> heard anything like this before? does anybody have any experience of the
> possible effects, on either reliability or performance, of tape hardware
> compression?
> TIA
>
> Jim Lane
> Sr. Technical Consultant
> Network Services
> Toronto Hydro
> office: (416)-542-2820
> cell: (416)-896-8576
>
> --
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