Storage efficiency features are techniques that reduce the amount of physical storage required to store data. ONTAP supports various storage efficiency features, such as deduplication, compression, and compaction. On AFF systems, some of these features are enabled by default on all newly created volumes. According to the documentation1, the following storage efficiency features are enabled by default on AFF systems:
Aggregate-level compression: This feature compresses data blocks at the aggregate level, reducing the physical space required to store data. Aggregate-level compression is applied after all other storage efficiency features, such as deduplication and compaction, are applied at the volume level. Aggregate-level compression is enabled by default on all aggregates on AFF systems.
Volume-level inline deduplication: This feature eliminates duplicate data blocks within a volume before they are written to disk, reducing the amount of data written and improving performance. Volume-level inline deduplication is enabled by default on all volumes on AFF systems.
Other storage efficiency features, such as LUN-level compression and aggregate-level inline deduplication, are not enabled by default on AFF systems. LUN-level compression is a feature that compresses data blocks at the LUN level, reducing the logical space required to store data. LUN-level compression is disabled by default on all LUNs on AFF systems, and it is not recommended to enable it unless there is a specific use case. Aggregate-level inline deduplication is a feature that eliminates duplicate data blocks across volumes within an aggregate before they are written to disk, reducing the amount of data written and improving performance. Aggregate-level inline deduplication is disabled by default on all aggregates on AFF systems, and it is recommended to enable it only on aggregates that contain volumes with similar data sets. References :- Inline storage efficiency enabled by default on AFF systems, Storage efficiency features, LUN-level compression, Aggregate-level inline deduplication
