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Enabling deduplication on a volume

You can enable deduplication on a FlexVol volume to achieve storage efficiency. You can enable postprocess deduplication on all volumes and inline deduplication on volumes that reside on AFA or Flash Pool aggregates. You must contact technical support if you want to enable inline deduplication on other types of volumes.

Before you begin

For a FlexVol volume, you must have verified that enough free space exists for deduplication metadata in volumes and aggregates. The deduplication metadata requires a minimum amount of free space in the aggregate. This amount is equal to 3% of the total amount of physical data for all deduplicated FlexVol volumes or data constituents within the aggregate. Each FlexVol volume or data constituent should have 4% of the total amount of physical data’s worth of free space, for a total of 7%.

Note
Beginning with ONTAP 9.5, inline deduplication is enabled by default on AFA systems.
  • Use the volume efficiency on command to enable postprocess deduplication.

    Example

    The following command enables postprocess deduplication on volume VolA: volume efficiency on -vserver vs1 -volume VolA
  • Use the volume efficiency on command followed by the volume efficiency modify command with the -inline-deduplication option set to true to enable both postprocess deduplication and inline deduplication.

    Example

    The following commands enable both postprocess deduplication and inline deduplication on volume VolA: volume efficiency on -vserver vs1 -volume VolA volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -inline-dedupe true
  • Use the volume efficiency on command followed by the volume efficiency modify command with the -inline-deduplication option set to true and the -policy option set to inline-only to enable only inline deduplication.

    Example

    The following commands enable only inline deduplication on volume VolA: volume efficiency on -vserver vs1 -volume VolA volume efficiency modify -vserver vs1 -volume VolA -policy inline-only -inline-dedupe true

After you finish

Verify that the setting has changed by viewing the volume efficiency settings: volume efficiency show -instance

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