So.... what's stopping you doing a quick test to find out what is best for you?
Take a chunk of your data, and copy it into a few volumes, each with a different compression config, and compare the results. Although reading the stuff you posted -- it really sounds like the only sensible options are lz4 or gzip. I ran a quick test using (non-zfs) equivalents of various compression tools, over a 2.0G filesystem image. (ie. hoping that represents a fair variety of binary+text files) lz4 1.7s 221M lz4 -6 10s 189M gzip 25s 151M bzip2 54s 135M 7z 147s 102M xz 253s 103M So if space is really at a premium, you're better off using an archive tool to compress everything, rather than zfs' built-in compression. You can store almost twice as much that way! But otherwise, gzip is better than lz4, but at significantly slower performance. -Toby On 19 November 2014 12:17, Peter Ross <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I want to reorganize some backups and use ZFS snapshots copied to a > "backup NAS" (I am having). > > Traditionally some zfs were sent as a .tgz to the NAS. > > I want to use ZFS compression on the box instead and look for the best > method to compress it. Space savings are important, speed isn't. > > Below the man page describing the compression methods available. > > Do you have experience to recommend a method working well? > > I do not want to "muck around" and change too much because it is Terabytes > worth of data and I do not want to reconfigure too often. > > I do not use compression on my production systems a lot so I do not have > too much experience with it. > > I have a few "not frequently used/non-critical" filesystems with lz4 - but > that's it. Speed-wise it did not seem to matter much compared to > uncompressed filesystems (but I did not benchmark properly) > > Thanks for any advice > Peter > > compression=on | off | lzjb | gzip | gzip-N | zle | lz4 > Controls the compression algorithm used for this dataset. The lzjb > compression algorithm is optimized for performance while providing > decent data compression. Setting compression to on uses the lzjb > com- > pression algorithm. The gzip compression algorithm uses the same > com- > pression as the gzip(1) command. You can specify the gzip level by > using the value gzip-N where N is an integer from 1 (fastest) to 9 > (best compression ratio). Currently, gzip is equivalent to gzip-6 > (which is also the default for gzip(1)). The zle compression algo- > rithm compresses runs of zeros. > > The lz4 compression algorithm is a high-performance replacement for > the lzjb algorithm. It features significantly faster compression and > decompression, as well as a moderately higher compression ratio than > lzjb, but can only be used on pools with the lz4_compress feature > set > to enabled. See zpool-features(7) for details on ZFS feature flags > and the lz4_compress feature. > > > _______________________________________________ > luv-main mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main -- Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list [email protected] http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
