Michael D. Schleif said: > [1] Should I use hardware compression? > > There seem to be several schools of thought here. I want to know > how > Amanda works with hardware compression? What are the advantages of > using software compression? What are the disadvantages of using > *both* > hardware and software compression?
I prefer software compression personally: -Amanda can make a more accurate estimate of how much tape is needed. So if you know your tape is 20 GB, and your software-compressed dump files total 21 GB, you know they won't all fit. With hardware compression you just have to guess-timate -Less bandwidth consumed if you do your compression on the client side (eg, before it comes to the tape server) -Less disk space used on your holding disk -If you back up to disks instead of tapes, hardware compression is not even an option The only drawback to software compression that I can see is the greater amount of cpu power consumed. For me, this is not really a problem, since my backups all happen in the wee hours when no-one is on my systems anyway. -- Kurt Yoder Sport & Health network administrator
