Backup compaction optimization in a block-level replication environment

[Deborah Pickett]

> Food for thought.  Maybe instead of having one "%SHARED" backup, having one "%SHARED.foo" backup per top-level shared folder would be a better implementation?  I haven't seen shared folders used much in practice, so it's interesting to hear about it.
>
> Looking at your own data, if you had one "%SHARED.foo" backup per top level shared folder, would they be roughly user-sized pieces, or still too big?  If too big, how deep would you need to go down the tree until the worst offenders are a manageable size?  (If I make it split shared folders like this, maybe "how-deep-to-split-shared-folders" needs to be a configuration parameter, because I guess it'll vary from installation to installation.)
>
For my data, %SHARED.foo would be the perfect granularity level. Each 
foo is a shared email address like "sales" or "accounts" and it gets 
about as much traffic as a user account does.  (Two months ago when we 
were on Exchange, they _were_ user accounts.)

foo also includes "#calendars" and "#addressbooks" on my server so there 
are weird characters to deal with.

-- 
Deborah Pickett
System Administrator
Polyfoam Australia Pty Ltd