Mixing Deduplication and Compression on Active Data Sets

Many new storage systems provide some form of data reduction. We examine data reduction methods that might be suitable for \emph{primary} storage systems serving active data (as contrasted with backup and archive systems), by analysis of file sets found in different active data environments. We address questions of: how effective are compression and variations of deduplication, both separately and in combination, when deduplication and compression are combined, which should be applied first, what will the tradeoff be between the different methods in their use of MIPS relative to the data reduction achieved, and what degree of data reduction should be expected for different data types.