You can enable data compression on a FlexVol volume to achieve space savings by using the volume efficiency modify command. You can also assign a compression type to your volume, if you do not want the default compression type.

What you’ll need

You must have enabled deduplication on the volume.

Deduplication only needs to be enabled and does not need to be running on the volume.
The compression scanner must be used to compress the existing data on the volumes present in ETERNUS AX/AC series.

Enabling deduplication on a volume

About this task

In HDD aggregates and Flash Pool aggregates, you can enable both inline and postprocess compression or only postprocess compression on a volume.

If you are enabling both, then you must enable postprocess compression on the volume before enabling inline compression.
In ETERNUS AX/AC series, only inline compression is supported.

Before enabling inline compression, you must enable postprocess compression on the volume. However, because postprocess compression is not supported in ETERNUS AX/AC series, no postprocess compression takes place on those volumes and an EMS message is generated informing you that postprocess compression was skipped.
Temperature sensitive storage efficiency is introduced in ONTAP 9.8. With this feature, storage efficiency is applied according to whether data is hot or cold. For cold data, larger data blocks are compressed, and for hot data, which is overwritten more often, smaller data blocks are compressed, making the process more efficient. Temperature sensitive storage efficiency is enabled automatically on newly created thin-provisioned ETERNUS AX volumes.
The compression type is automatically assigned based on the aggregate’s platform:

Platform/aggregates Compression type

ETERNUS AX

Adaptive compression

Flash Pool aggregates

Adaptive compression

HDD aggregates

Secondary compression

Platform/aggregates	Compression type
ETERNUS AX	Adaptive compression
Flash Pool aggregates	Adaptive compression
HDD aggregates	Secondary compression

Choices

Use the volume efficiency modify command to enable data compression with the default compression type.

The following command enables postprocess compression on volume VolA of SVM vs1:

volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -compression true

The following command enables both postprocess and inline compression on volume VolA of SVM vs1:

volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -compression true -inline-compression true
Use the volume efficiency modify command at the advanced privilege level to enable data compression with a specific compression type.
1. Use the set -privilege advanced command to change the privilege level to advanced.
2. Use the volume efficiency modify command to assign a compression type to a volume.
  
  The following command enables postprocess compression and assigns the adaptive compression type to volume VolA of SVM vs1:
  
  volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -compression true -compression-type adaptive
  
  The following command enables both postprocess and inline compression and assigns the adaptive compression type to volume VolA of SVM vs1:
  
  volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -compression true -compression-type adaptive -inline-compression true
3. Use the set -privilege admin command to change the privilege level to admin.

ONTAP 9 Manuals ( CA08871-402 )

Enable data compression on a volume

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