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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:30:41 -0700
From: Andrew Sharp <andy.sharp@onstor.com>
To: Narayan Venkat <narayan.venkat@onstor.com>
Subject: Re: Compression Ratio on Mightydog\Marketing data
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Hi N,

We should have a talk about these.  ~:^)

It's 1.38, BTW.  But these aren't good numbers for marketing/sales
purposes.  Back the last time this came up, I did a fair bit of poking
around, and most of these compression weenies claim 9:1 and crazy stuff
like that in their marketing literature.  Now, you and I both know that
there's no way that's a real world number, but something closer to 3:1
or 4:1 would make it seem like it's worth while compared to competitors
numbers.  Because there are so many jpegs and AVIs on the marketing
folder, which don't compress at all, a better choice would be several
engineer's home directories.  Full of source code, which compresses
quite well.  Make sure you delete any .gz or .tgz files from the target
folder, because they will bork the numbers.  Don't delete them from
the home directories though ~:^)

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:09:21 -0700 Narayan Venkat
<narayan.venkat@onstor.com> wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> I ran a small experiment to understand what level of data compression I could get for typical user folders.  I copied over \\Mightydog\Marketing folder into two ZFS file systems with compression turned on.  Here are the observed compression ratios:
> 
> a)       Case 1:
> a.       Compression - GZIP
> b.       Marketing folder size on Mightydog - 24.6GB
> c.       Same folder size on ZFS - 17.7GB
> d.       Compression ratio - 1.41x
> b)       Case 2:
> a.       Compression - GZIP-9
> b.       Marketing folder size on Mightydog - 24.6GB
> c.       Same folder size on ZFS - 17.7GB
> d.       Compression ratio - 1.42x
> 
> It's pretty good compression for the diversity of data stored (ppt, xls, avi, vss, doc, pdf, jpegs, ...) in the Marketing folder.  The beauty of it was that compression was free.  No need to add expensive "in-line" compression appliances.
> 
> Now that is a good value proposition to a customer.
> 
> 
> Narayan Venkat
> Vice President, Marketing
> ONStor Inc. (www.onstor.com<http://www.onstor.com>)
> Tel: (408) 963-2404
> Cell: (408) 221-4297
> 
