Hey Checkyourlogs Fans,

Today, we have a quick post just reminding you that if you have Windows Server 2012 R2 File Servers are not able to migrate them to Server 2019 yet. You can still fix issues like lack of disk space with good old deduplication. Deduplication has worked for us like a charm on NTFS volumes, especially file servers for 7+ years now. We run it in production, and it makes a big difference. This week we faced an issue with a customer that was looking to convert virtual machines using ISCSI and Passthrough disks with Veeam. http://www.checkyourlogs.net/?p=66163 . Our problem was the actual size of the pass-through disks was over 4 TB, and it would take a long time to get the job done having to move all of that data.

As a solution, we decided to enable deduplication to compact the space and speed up the eventual conversion job.

There are 3 easy steps to configure this:

Step 1 – Enable Deduplication


Step 2 – Reboot the Server

Step 3 – Turn on Deduplication



In our case, we used the General purpose File Server mode and as a final configuration of the schedule.

Here is a look at the Deduplication Job in progress.


The above screen shot utilizes two PowerShell commands for Deduplication (Get-DedupJob and Get-Dedupstatus). This screen shot was when we first kicked off the deduplication jobs.


Now, we can see that even at 50 % complete that over close to 900 GB has been freed up and the jobs are only 50 % complete.

In closing, this little trick will save us a ton of time for the actual VM Conversion that is required as the next step.

Thanks,


John