There seems to be a lot of chatter about Microsoft adding missing features to ReFS in Windows Server 2019. Is disk compression now available? And if so, does it work in conjunction with data deduplication?
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ReFS does not support compression, but if you use deduplication on a ReFS volume, compression is used - at least according to this page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/data-deduplication/whats-new
Screenshot:
ylluminate
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fabspro
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Interesting, does this compress all files or are you saying that the deduplication is a form of compression? Is there a way to see statistics on a per file basis to confirm not only this, but how it's being applied and so forth (ie, size of file and size on disk)? – ylluminate Jun 18 '20 at 06:54
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@ylluminate I cannot see any statistics on a per-file basis, but if you run the ddpeval.exe tool, it actually estimates your savings with deduplication - both before and after compression. I suspect that when dedup is used, all chunks that go into the dedup store are compressed. I am not sure if that has the effect of 'compressing' /all/ files, but I would suspect that all of your in-policy files will find themselves in the store with compression. – fabspro Jun 18 '20 at 08:11
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@ylluminate I added a link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/data-deduplication/whats-new – fabspro Jun 18 '20 at 08:11
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I appreciate your having noted that - I added an image in an edit for future reference. I'm curious, the latter annotated part says "optional compression" so I have to wonder: is there a way to turn it on since it is "optional?" – ylluminate Jun 19 '20 at 20:33
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@ylluminate I cannot find any setting. My imagination says that whenever a file is optimised, the data is stored into chunks which are compressed before being stored. But I would love to see something more concrete get published into the docs. Maybe worth doing an experiment - empty volume, 1000gb file, see how much disk space is used? – fabspro Jun 21 '20 at 04:59
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From reading the screenshot you added, it says "variable-size chunk store with optional compression" but doesn't say if it's the administrator's option, or the deduplication system's option :) – fabspro Jun 21 '20 at 05:01
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Unfortunately it appears that Microsoft has not yet added compression to ReFS in Windows Server 2019 (version 1709) as per this document:
ylluminate
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