Michael D. Schleif said:
> [1] Should I use hardware compression?
>
> There seem to be several schools of thought here.  I want to know
> how
> Amanda works with hardware compression?  What are the advantages of
> using software compression?  What are the disadvantages of using
> *both*
> hardware and software compression?

I prefer software compression personally:

-Amanda can make a more accurate estimate of how much tape is
needed.  So if you know your tape is 20 GB, and your
software-compressed dump files total 21 GB, you know they won't all
fit. With hardware compression you just have to guess-timate

-Less bandwidth consumed if you do your compression on the client
side (eg, before it comes to the tape server)

-Less disk space used on your holding disk

-If you back up to disks instead of tapes, hardware compression is
not even an option


The only drawback to software compression that I can see is the
greater amount of cpu power consumed. For me, this is not really a
problem, since my backups all happen in the wee hours when no-one is
on my systems anyway.

-- 
Kurt Yoder
Sport & Health network administrator