Should I be using the compression directives or not?

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There are those who say that you should never use them. It is the opinion of the FAQ maintainer that you should not use them unless you really need them, and they help you. If you do think that you'd like to use them, make sure you test their effect on your backups and recoveries. Remember that software compression will put a much higher CPU load on your clients. If you can spare the CPU cycles, but not the network bandwidth, then perhaps compression is for you. Here's an explanation from one person who benefitted from software compression, even on a network where I would not normally use it.

From: Rodney Wines Rodney.Wines@ahqps.alcatel.fr> We have mostly 100mb clients and a few old 10mb as well. We also have a switched network. I use client side compression for the majority of our systems, because it reduces backup time by 1/3 or more. It slows down the backup for individual systems with slow CPU's, but the aggrigate time is still faster.

I just make sure that the slow systems start before the faster systems so they'll have company during backup and the DLT7000's will keep streaming.