Backup compression with windows
Josef Albert asked whether 7-zip or another tool could serve as BACKUP_FILTER and RESTORE_FILTER on Windows, as the old gzip port was slow. Andreas Legner, Art Kagel and Doug Lawry suggested pigz, limiting its cores with a processes option. Josef got a 32-bit pigz port working with fast compression, giving his filter settings. Tom Girsch suggested testing levels -3 to -5.
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Hi, did anyone successfully use 7-zip or something else as BACKUP_FILTER and RESTORE_FILTER ? With the 14 years old windows port of gzip it's possible to use the filters, but the speed and the compression are realy bad compared to 7-zip. Thanks. Joe ------------------------------ Josef Albert ------------------------------ #Informix
Try searching the web for e.g. "BACKUP_FILTER pigz", I do remember this (and others) being discussed somewhere (in the sense of "being used and working"). ------------------------------ Andreas Legner ------------------------------
Josef: You can use pigz, just be careful, depending on the options you pass to pigz it can use every cycle from every core on your machine to 0% idle! Fast as lightning though. Art ------------------------------ Art S. Kagel, President and Principal Consultant ASK Database Management Corp. www.askdbmgt.com ------------------------------
As others have said, "pigz -pn" is a trusted option, limiting it to "n" of your cores or it will use all by default. Source is here, though you would need a C compiler and the "zlib" library: https://zlib.net/pigz Have never used on Windows, but have found this for you: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pigz-for-windows/files/pigz-win32.zip/download There may be a 64-bit compiled version out there, but not easily found. ------------------------------ Doug Lawry Oninit Consulting ------------------------------
Thank you guys, pigz (32-bit port) is working fine :) BACKUP_FILTER 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Pigz\\pigz.exe --fast --processes 3 --blocksize 512' RESTORE_FILTER 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Pigz\\pigz.exe --decompress' Fast compression is enough, there is not much difference between --fast and --best. (--best needs a little less space but much more time) ------------------------------ Josef Albert ------------------------------
Joseph: If the 32-bit port supports it, you might try testing with the numbered compression options to find the "sweet spot." –fast translates to -1, while –best translates to -9; I've found that somewhere between -3 and -5 provides the best balance of compression and performance.
[I believe if you don't specify –fast or –best or any numbered option, it defaults to -5]