Follow me and learn Windows Server 2012 - Data Deduplication

Bruce here again, day 12 on my journey!  Yes I know it’s Friday night.  But this is my quest. Tonight I am looking into Data Deduplication . 

This looks to be a great way to save on Disk space.  So far I have learned we can save anywhere form  2:1 up to 20:1 on storage space.  This is only for data drive so no System or Boot volumes and from my research it does not work on Cluster shared volumes either.  It appears we get the best deduplication on Virtualization Libraries.  This appears to be poor choice for SQL and Exchange data sets.  Microsoft at this time only supports this on NTFS volumes.  Below are some links to help you learn this feature.

Data Deduplication Overview

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831602.aspx

Data deduplication involves finding and removing duplication within data without compromising its fidelity or integrity. The goal is to store more data in less space by segmenting files into small variable-sized chunks (32–128 KB), identifying duplicate chunks, and maintaining a single copy of each chunk. Redundant copies of the chunk are replaced by a reference to the single copy. The chunks are compressed and then organized into special container files in the System Volume Information folder.

About Data Deduplication

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/Hh769303(v=vs.85).aspx

Eliminating Duplicated Primary Data

https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/deduplication-101311.aspx

Data Deduplication Interoperability

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831454.aspx

Data Deduplication API

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh449204(v=vs.85).aspx