NetApp Deduplication Interface Considerations

Block backups interact with the NetApp deduplication (Advanced Single-Instance Storage) for the NetApp storage systems.

The Catalogic DPX Block Data Protection processing automatically invokes block deduplication after the data transfer; all data at the root of the volume is deduplicated at that time. Due to differences in deduplication support between Data ONTAP versions, it is strongly recommended that Data ONTAP 8.0.1 or later be used with 64-bit aggregates to maximize deduplication and processing efficiency.

Deduplication is a feature that is enabled per volume. It is recommended to start deduplication backup jobs on newly created empty NetApp volumes as the NetApp deduplication will not deduplicate data already retained in existing snapshots. For volumes with A-SIS enabled, deduplication processing is automatic and occurs immediately after the backup job completes. Scheduled volume deduplication should be disabled within Data ONTAP as the backup automatically invokes the deduplication process, and any additional scheduling is redundant and an unnecessary drain on system resources. There is no option to defer deduplication until a later time.

NetApp deduplication requires a NetApp A-SIS license.