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The purpose of this shootout was to analyze already backed up images of VM guests sitting idle on disk. We like to keep 7 days online, so I was curious as to how the two compared in our environment.

Compressed vs Deduplicated

COMPRESSED: (backed up via vRanger Pro over VCB, size on win NTFS volume)
citrix_server = 4.29gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 9.76gb
citrix_server2 = 6.14gb
win2k3_member = 4.97gb

compressed vm total = 25.16gb

UNCOMPRESSED:

citrix_server = 10gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 20gb
citrix_server2 = 10gb
win2k3_member = 35gb

uncompressed total = 75gb

DEDUPED VS COMPRESSED:

deduped     = 54.29% savings (NetApp cmd output below)
compressed     = 66.45% savings

Here’s the actual output from the NetApp find_space exe:
A-SIS Deduplication Space Savings estimate.

Name of Fingerprint File:          d:\esx_deduped.txt
Total Number of Directories:       5
Total Number of Files:             58
Total Number of 4K Blocks:         19662390
Total Number of Duplicate Blocks:  10673928
Percentage of Duplicate Data:      54.29
Scan Start Time:                   Wed, Jul 30 2008 3:40:16 PM
Scan End Time:                     Wed, Jul 30 2008 4:22:25 PM

I’ll be honest, I was expecting deduplication to blow compression out of the water even with only 4 vm’s. I’ll go out on a limb and venture that deduplication would provide more results as you toss more vm’s into the picture.

esxRanger Pro 3.1 tvzc Manual Restore Details
esxRanger Pro product is unavailable to restore

Solution
This is a how-to restore a esxRanger Pro 3.1 tvzc backup by hand

Download this file from vizoncore.com
http://www.vizioncore.com/Downloads/ProductSupport/vcbrestore.zip
Extract and Copy vcbrestore to /tmp on the Vi3 host (note you can not run this binary from a VMFS)
Note: if you’re going to use WinScp make sure to “disable transfer resume” in preferences. This will remove any errors when sending large files to the VMFS3.
Run chmod 777 /tmp/vcbrestore
Create a directory on the VMFS3 where the VM will be contained.
Copy *.tvzc to the folder you just created on the VMFS.

List the files in the tvzc
/tmp/vcbrestore -D -I ./test_4.tvzc -O /dev/stdout | tar tvf - -O

Extract each file needed in the directory
/tmp/vcbrestore -D -I ./test_4.tvzc -O /dev/stdout | tar xvf - “each fie needed”
(If the vzc files are not on the VMFS where the VM will be created just use a path in the output file name)

Repeat for each file needed and remove .vzsnap off each file name
Register the VMX file the esx host
vmware-cmd -s register <full- path to the VMX>
You might still have to edit the VM in the Vi3 client to fix any issues.
Once the VM is up and running rm tvzc to remove the files from the VMFS.