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How do platforms supporting QAT or zlib compression impact SnapMirror and volume move?

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Applies to

  • AFX, AFF, ASA A-Series, and AFF C-Series platforms supporting QuickAssist Technology (QAT) and zlib compression
    • A1K, A90, A70, A50, A30
      Note:  A20 does not have QAT-capable CPUs, but supports zlib compression
    • C80, C60, C30
  • SnapMirror
  • Volume move (vol move)

Answer

Source Destination SnapMirror behavior Volume move behavior
  • QAT (zlib) platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later
  • QAT (zlib) platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later

All data compression savings are maintained

All data compression savings are maintained

Fabricpool volumes perform optimized volume move.
  • QAT (zlib) platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later
  • Non-QAT platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later

zlib compression savings are reformatted to destination platform native compression savings (TSSE supported)

zlib compression savings are reformatted to the destination platform native compression savings

Fabricpool volumes perform unoptimized volume move. Data is transferred and uncompressed from capacity and then immediately staged for re-tiering and re-compression using destination platform compression.
  • QAT (zlib) platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later
  • Non-QAT platform
  • ONTAP 9.14.1 or earlier

zlib compression savings are reformatted to destination platform native compression savings

 N/A
  • Non-QAT platform
  • Any ONTAP version compatible with destination
  • QAT (zlib) platform
  • ONTAP 9.15.1 or later
 All compression savings are written as zlib compression savings

All compression savings reformatted to zlib compression savings

Fabricpool volumes perform optimized volume move and retain non-QAT compression savings. In this scenario, compression savings are not reformatted.
  • Note: There is no need to explicitly enable compression on a SnapMirror destination. Doing so can result in SnapMirror not maintaining storage efficiency savings over the network
  • Check a volume's compression algorithm by using the command:
    ::> volume efficiency show -fields state,compression-algorithm
    Ensure that storage efficiency is enabled before concluding that any given compression algorithm is being used
Reformatting
  • Reformatting QAT (zlib) compressed data to a non-QAT platform's native compression incurs additional overhead. This may result in a marginal performance impact to replication for both SnapMirror and volume move
  • Due to the highly efficient QAT / zlib compression alogorithm, significant differences between source and destination volume sizes can result when replicating to or from a non-QAT platform

Additional Information

Parent topic: SnapMirror storage efficiency configurations and behavior

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