Data Compression and Deduplication

Veeam Backup & Replication provides mechanisms of data compression and deduplication. Data compression and deduplication let you decrease traffic going over the network and disk space required for storing backup files and VM replicas.

Data Compression

Data compression decreases the size of created backups but affects duration of the backup procedure. Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to select one of the following compression levels:

• None compression level is recommended if you plan to store backup files and VM replica files on storage devices that support hardware compression and deduplication.
• Dedupe-friendly is an optimized compression level for very low CPU usage. You can select this compression level if you want to decrease the load on the backup proxy.
• Optimal is the recommended compression level. It provides the best ratio between size of the backup file and time of the backup procedure.
• High compression level provides additional 10% compression ratio over the Optimal level at the cost of about 10x higher CPU usage.
• Extreme compression provides the smallest size of the backup file but reduces the backup performance. We recommend that you run backup proxies on computers with modern multi-core CPUs (6 cores recommended) if you intend to use the extreme compression level.

Changing Data Compression Settings

You can change data compression settings for existing backup jobs. New settings will not have any effect on previously created backup files in the backup chain. They will be applied to new backup files created after the settings were changed.

Compression settings are changed on the fly. You do not need to create a new full backup to use new settings — Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically apply the new compression level to newly created backup files.

However, if you use the reverse incremental backup method, the newly created backup files will contain a mixture of data blocks compressed at different levels. For example, you have a backup job that uses the reverse incremental backup method and the Optimal level of compression. After several job sessions, you change the compression level to High. In the reverse incremental backup chains, the full backup file is rebuilt with every job session to include new data blocks. As a result, the full backup file will contain a mixture of data blocks: data blocks compressed at the Optimal level and data blocks compressed at the High level. The same behaviour applies to synthetic full backups: synthetic full backups created after the compression level change will contain a mixture of data blocks compressed at different levels.

If you want the newly created backup file to contain data blocks compressed at one level, you can create an active full backup. Veeam Backup & Replication will retrieve data for the whole VM image from the production infrastructure and compress it at the new compression level. All subsequent backup files in the backup chain will also use the new compression level.

Deduplication

Data deduplication decreases the size of backup files. You can enable data deduplication if you add to backup or replication jobs several VMs that have a great amount of free space on their logical disks or VMs that have similar data blocks — for example, VMs that were created from the same template. With data deduplication enabled, Veeam Backup & Replication does not store to the resulting backup file identical data blocks and space that has been pre-allocated but not used.

Veeam Backup & Replication uses Veeam Data Movers to deduplicate VM data on the source and target side.

• The source-side Veeam Data Mover deduplicates VM data at the level of VM disks. Before the source Veeam Data Mover starts processing a VM disk, it obtains digests for the previous restore point in the backup chain from the target-side Veeam Data Mover. The source-side Veeam Data Mover consolidates this information with CBT information from the hypervisor and filters VM disk data based on it. If some data block exists in the previous restore point for this VM, the source-side Veeam Data Mover does not transport this data block to the target. In addition to it, in case of thin disks the source-side Veeam Data Mover skips unallocated space.
• The target-side Veeam Data Mover deduplicates VM data at the level of the backup file. It processes data for all VM disks of all VMs in the job. The target-side Veeam Data Mover uses digests to detect identical data blocks in transported data, and stores only unique data blocks to the resulting backup file.

You can change the inline data deduplication settings for existing backup jobs. New changes will not have any effect on previously created backup files in the backup chain. They will be applied to new backup files created after the settings were changed.

Inline Data Deduplication setting can be changed on the fly. You do not need to create a new full backup to enable/disable this setting. Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically apply the change to newly created backup files.

Storage Optimization

Veeam Backup & Replication uses data blocks of different size to process VMs. Data block size depends on the type of storage you select as a backup target.

When you deduplicate a large backup file to small data blocks, Veeam Backup & Replication produces a very large deduplication metadata table, which can potentially overgrow memory and CPU resources of your backup repository. To optimize the job performance and data block size, you can choose one of the following options in accordance with the size of your backup files.

Changing Storage Optimization Settings

You can change storage optimization settings for existing backup jobs. New settings will not have any effect on previously created backup files in the backup chain. They will be applied to new backup files created after the settings were changed.

Backup Jobs

To apply new storage optimization settings in backup jobs, you must create an active full backup after you change storage optimization settings. Veeam Backup & Replication will use the new block size for the active full backup and subsequent backup files in the backup chain.

Backup Copy Jobs

To change data block size for a backup copy job, you must perform the following actions:

1. Change data block size in settings of the initial backup job.
2. Create an active full backup with the initial backup job.
3. Create an active full backup with the backup copy job.

Related Topics

Storage Settings