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Storage : Volumes : Understanding volumes : Guidelines for using deduplication
Guidelines for using deduplication
You must remember certain guidelines about system resources and free space when using deduplication.
The guidelines are as follows:
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If you have a performance sensitive solution, carefully consider the performance impact of deduplication and measure the impact in a test setup before using deduplication.
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Deduplication is a background process that consumes system resources while it is running.
If the data does not change very often in a FlexVol volume, it is best to run deduplication less frequently. Multiple concurrent deduplication operations running on a storage system lead to a higher consumption of system resources.
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You must ensure that sufficient free space exists for deduplication metadata in the volumes and aggregates.
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For releases earlier than Data ONTAP 8.1, you cannot increase the size of a volume that contains deduplicated data beyond the maximum supported size limit, either manually or by using the autogrow option.
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For releases earlier than Data ONTAP 8.1, you cannot enable deduplication on a volume if it is larger than the maximum volume size.
However, you can enable deduplication on a volume after reducing its size within the supported size limits.
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If deduplication is used on the source volume, use deduplication on the destination volume.
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Use automatic mode when possible so deduplication runs only when significant additional data has been written to each flexible volume.
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Run deduplication before creating a Snapshot copy to obtain maximum savings.
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Set the Snapshot reserve for greater than 0 if Snapshot copies are used.

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