here’s the updated link: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3505.pdf

Thanks for the feedback.

I don’t know of any resources off the top of my head. I do agree that adding deduplication to an existing SnapMirror relationship will most certainly cause a spike in snap reserve usage, but I’m also wondering about the replication traffic. I guess transferring pointers should be easy and low-impact, but I don’t know that for certain.

I’ll see if I can get in touch with some friends at NetApp and dig something up for you. Or perhaps a NetApp reader would care to comment here…?

Can you provide or point me to any resources that detail the affect SIS has on *existing* SnapMirror operations? I’ve found plenty about SIS + SM = good, but most sites talk about turning on SM after SIS.

We are in the process of reorganizing several sets of data via SM that I can’t afford to stop and restart. However, because of savings we’ve seen (up to 71% - and that’s not even VMware!), we’d like to turn it on everywhere.

Theory says it should work just fine and begin transferring the deduped blocks with a big hit in the snap reserve until the exising snaps expire, but unfortunately, I don’t have the capacity to test that theory.

I’m glad you found the article helpful. Thanks for reading!

This post was invaluable in letting me know that A-SIS licensing was now free and how to get it set up. I had recently upgraded our FAS3020’s to OnTAP 7.2.4 and our ESX servers to 3.5.0 so I was ready to rock. On Friday I created my first A-SIS volumes and started to Storage VMotion VMs into them. I’m using iSCSI and I’m turning off Space Reservation for the LUNs (and experimenting with (file Space Reservation for the volumes) to reap the storage savings as well as give the A-SIS metadata the room it needs to work. I have all VMware workload on these, so of course I’m seeing a great return rate (40+% so far). Thanks!

Talk to your NetApp SE or sales rep for more information–I have information on this but I can’t discuss it with you because it’s under NDA. Your best bet is to take that matter up directly with your NetApp team.

As for the comparison with Data Domain, one key thing to remember is that with NetApp we are deduplicating primary data. It is my understanding that Data Domain deduplicates backup data only, so there are some important differences in what the two companies are trying to achieve with this functionality.

The limits according to tr-3505 is just plain artificial and silly how low. They would force us into extra managment work just to be able to use ASIS. Being used to Datadomains, the Netapp-numbers seems like “buy bigger that you need” practise from the company.

Yeah, I’ve noticed posts from your blog showing up in my RSS feeds over the last few days–looks like you’ve got some good stuff so far, keep up the good work. I’m glad you and your team are finding my site helpful.

Take care!