Deduplication on Nimble and Windows both enabled

[User77]

We have replicated data from one server to several servers, with new virtual hard drive's. On these new drives we have enabled deduplication on Nimble, before we moved everything. But afterwards we have also enabled Windows deduplication, which we removed later on one server for testing. We want to know if the Nimble deduplication is still working then? And can you have both enabled?

[Nick_Dyer · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Nimble deduplication is variable block size (4-32K) and is also inline - meaning it dedupes data inflight. Whereas Windows dedupe is post-process (happens over time) and is not as granular.

If you have Windows dedupe on, you will lose efficiency on the Nimble array - but may see a little dedupe. However, Windows dedupe will negatively impact your snapshots and any replication you do on the array, as Windows will modify the written blocks to the system and will inflate any snapshots or replicas you have. Furthermore, Windows dedupe could also negatively impact Nimble's compression.

I personally would disable windows dedupe, and let Nimble do the work - that's what it's designed to do.

[User77]

Hello Nick,

Thank you for the answer!

We will disable Windows dedup as you said, the only question I have is do we have to move the data again? because the Nimble dedup is inline?