You're not very clear on what bugs specifically you're looking to address with 8.1.1 versus 8.1RC3. In regards to compression specifically, the main driver to run 8.1+ versus 8.0.x is that compression can be scheduled as a post-process job instead of being an inline process. This alleviates pressure on the CPUs during production hours since post-process compression runs immediately prior to deduplication. You can read about everything in TR-3958 (http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3958.pdf).
I've had customers running in-line compression in 8.0.x and post-process and in-line in 8.1RC3 without any major issues or bugs. There was a bug related to compression previously but that was fixed back in 8.0.1P4. I think once 8.1 goes GA we'll start seeing it more widely deployed as customers begin to upgrade OnTap.
From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Milazzo Giacomo Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 3:23 AM To: toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Compression. What's real and what they trumpet
Hi all,
since a lot of time but more over during past events NetApp shouts it from the rooftops that "data compression" in 8.x is a reality! Fake. Yet today a PVR is requested to activate the compression on 8.0.x (the most of "8" installations are on this release) and 8.1 is currently in RC...again, 8.1 has several bugs to be fixed in 8.1.1 (when?) that interest 3100 series (lot of systems running on this platform). Me, and most of my collegues, don't trust in compression. Yes, we can test it, we can do some trick but to upgrade a perfectly running system just to compress some data is another play.
The issue is that customers attending those events want to compress data and ask us to set up the systems. What's your opinions about this feature? We've experienced several troubles in a production environment. I still consider that compression is not a mature feature how could be, for instance, deduplication or all the techniques to implement the so named storage efficiency.
Regards
Dott. Giacomo Milazzo [cid:image001.jpg@01CD1339.14AFC6A0] Technical Account Manager Sinergy SpA Filiale di Roma * 00198. viale Regina Margherita, 269 ' (+39) 3406001045 0644245272 7 (+39) 0226922048 * Giacomo.Milazzo@Sinergy.it
