FEATURE REQUEST: Data Compression on the Client, then send to the Server for Backup

[bgjhu]

Here's a feature that will save me tons of time and money.

 

Much of the backups I do involve backing up LOTS of raw data, and I repeatedly see statistics in the backup log like this:

 

Completed: 4586 files, 16.1 GB, with 80% compression

Performance: 39.2 MB/minute

Duration: 07:38:28 (00:35:54 idle/loading/preparing)

 

What would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL would be to be able to COMPRESS the data IN THE CLIENT BEFORE it goes across the Network.

 

In this case, compressing the data on the client before sending it across the network would save me nearly 80% of my backup time and reduce my network bandwidth usage (ie: MONEY) by 80% as well.

 

I will happily offload the processing for the compression and the extra few minutes to compress the data on the client in order to save 80% of my backup time and network traffic.

 

Can this be done?

 

Please Please Please Please Please Please?

 

Thanks,

 

- Brian Gallagher

[jamesmerrill]

That sure seems like a good idea to me. My "server" is a considerably weaker machine (it's the 3.5-year-old NT4 Server that has the tape drive) than most of the client machines.

 

We can always turn the feature off when the client is too feeble to handle the compression workload.

[queball]

I second the motion.