ENVIRONMENT: Netbackup 7.1.04 (going to 7.5 soon). All windows environment. 1 Master server and 3 media servers (Server 2003 and 2008).
STORAGE: 40 tape library and 3 LTO3 drives. Recently added an Exagrid Open Storage appliance (Ex7000).
PROBLEM: Prior to adding the disk based storage, we used compression on pretty much every policy. Since adding the Exagrid, we turned comrpession off, per their recommendation (I think it's related to deduplication, as well as speed, but dedup is a big factor for us). I'm using Storage Life Cycle Policies (SLP) to duplicate to tape, and as a result I'm using alot more tapes; so many, that I'm inclined to try turning it back on and see what effect it actually has on the Exagrid.
QUESTION: Is there a practical way to compression the copies on tape, while copies to Disk remain uncompressed? Or is there some setting that I'm missing?
The driver properties of the HP Ultrium LTO4 drives say that Compression is enabled already.
The only options of which I can think are (none of which I like):
- Create different Policies for the same backups: one to Disk, another for tape with compression enabled
- enable compression and see what effect it has on the Exagrid