Restic Disk Usage Has Me Tearing My Hair Out

[rawtaz]

@forbin

The source data is 4.8 TB, but when it gets rsync’d to storage server 1, ZFS compresses it to 2.2 TB. If restic sends 4.8 TB of uncompressed data over the wire to storage server 2, I would expect ZFS on storage server 2 to do the same thing as storage server 1 did when it received the raw data from the DB server. The end result should still be 2.2 TB of used space on storage server 2.

No, because the data is not the same when stored on server 2 as it is/was when stored on server 1.

• On server 1, the ZFS sees compressible data and thereby successfully compresses it from 4.8 TB to 2.2 TB on disk.

• On server 2, the ZFS there sees less compressible data (restic’s encrypted binary blobs et al), and thereby is not as successful in compressing it (but manages to do so from 4.8 TB to 4.4 TB on disk) - or it’s restic that compresses the data from 4.8 TB to 4.4 TB.

At least that’s my theory, but whether it’s correct or not depends on the answers to Michael’s questions