Amanda-Users

Re: Disabling LTO-2 hardware compression

2006-05-02 10:30:47
Subject: Re: Disabling LTO-2 hardware compression
From: Paul Bijnens <paul.bijnens AT xplanation DOT com>
To: Guy Dallaire <clepeterd AT gmail DOT com>
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 16:28:16 +0200
On 2006-05-02 16:17, Guy Dallaire wrote:
Hi,

Recently added an Overland LoaderXpress LTO 2 tape library to my setup. Inside the loader is an OEM HP Ultrium tape drive. My tape server is a centos 4.2 box (RHEL 4 clone)

I'm using software compression with amanda 2.4.5p1 already.

Problem is, the tape drive in the library always seems to have hardware compression ON. There is no way on the library operator panel to force the compression OFF.

How did you find out?  Used "amtapetype -c"?  (just curious)



I've heard that LTO2 drives can easily cope with already compressed data (and do not try to re compress it). Is this true ? Otherwise, I fear that trying to compress already compressed data might actually use more tape space and reduce throughput.

I've searched the amanda wiki and di not find anything.

Yes, leaving HW compression for LTO drives does not hurt.
In fact, I have exactly the same, and have hw-compression on, so that
those few DLE's that have no compression enabled (because they are too
slow), can benefit from hw-compression, giving me a few extra bytes on
the tapes.

http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Tapetype_definitions#HP448_.28LTO_Ultrium2.29_with_200.2F400_Gbyte_tapes


--
Paul Bijnens, xplanation Technology Services        Tel  +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM    Fax  +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/          email:  Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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