ZSTD Compression

[Tom Elliott]

Remember, the speed was due to finding out after that I was using a non-multi-threading version of zstd. The speeds are much faster when paired with multiple CPU’s. The size, however, isn’t much different with or without multithreading.

[Wayne Workman]

@loosus456 said in ZSTD Compression:

We actually have about 1.5 TB worth of FOG images.

Then you are not most people.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tom-Elliott said in ZSTD Compression:

the pzstd library was more of use as it allowed realtime and multiple core compression.
I am having a problem building pzstd for 32 bit systems though :(.

32 bit systems can use the zstd one. Can’t wait to see the compression/decompression speeds when you get pzstd working.

I can setup some tests for multiple unicast tasks simultaneously and I’m sure I’ll be able to note greater performance with the better compression.

[Junkhacker]

@Wayne-Workman we have 3.7TB

[Wayne Workman]

@Junkhacker You’re for-sure not most people.

[Tom Elliott]

I want to say for people, using the zstdmt (vs pzstd as I can’t get it to build on 32 bit) the imaging is MUCH faster even at -19.

It’s compressing at about the same rate, more or less, but it’s much faster than the 35 minutes I originally had tested against. Using zstdmt on the same image with all cores in use took the 35 minute time and got it all done in 2 minutes 58 seconds.

[Junkhacker]

@Tom-Elliott i was just performing some testing at zstandard -11 to compare to pigz -6
image size went from 16.4GB gz to 14.6GB zstdmt
capture time 14 minutes 15 seconds pigz to 11 minutes 4 seconds zstdmt
deploy time 3 minutes 33 seconds pigz to 2 minutes 38 seconds zstdmt

[Wayne Workman]

geeze that is flippin fast… ok I’m sold.

[Junkhacker]

i have not been able to get “ultra” levels (>=20) tasks to work without crashing. anyone else seeing the same?

[A Former User]

Anyone tried like a 40 GB image? That’s in the range where I’d like to see a comparison in deployment time.

[george1421]

@loosus456 I would say that a 40GB disk image is uncommon. If you have a source, then I might suggest that you update to the latest RC release and test the results.

[A Former User]

@george1421 40 GB is uncommon? Uh what? Are you guys deploying XP or something?

[Tom Elliott]

@Junkhacker I’m seeing exactly the same problem, and It feels like it’s writing the data and filling the RAM space too quickly. It’s doing so far faster than it can compress it, and overruns the memory space that partclone is using. (Just my theory).

[Tom Elliott]

@loosus456 My base images with all software had a disk usage of 48gb at it’s largest, but that was EVERYTHING I could put on. My “average” was about 25gb.

[compman]

@Junkhacker “ultra” compression ratio (>=20) use a lot of memory.
So, either stick to “normal” compression levels (<= 19), or limit the number of threads, to ensure it doesn’t consume too much memory.

[A Former User]

@Tom-Elliott We have images with Autodesk and Solidworks near 100 GB.

[Tom Elliott]

@loosus456 I’m not disagreeing, I’m just saying what I imagine “most” people are working with (on average).

[A Former User]

@Tom-Elliott I dunno. Most educational professionals I work with have had similar sizes.

[Wayne Workman]

@loosus456 said in ZSTD Compression:

40 GB is uncommon?

My Win10 images were around 20GB. Linux images are even smaller, 3 or 4 GB - and that’s all I deploy anymore, just all Linux.

Understand when I build an image - it’s lean. No flab. I literally throw out the manufacturer’s bloated crappy flabby unoptimized image and build my own from scratch. Not just for size & performance reasons but for security reasons too. Computer manufacturers don’t vet the bloatware they sign contracts for - to install into their images - many times these crappy bloated pieces of software are found to have vulnerabilities. But I make images lean. In Windows that means a vanilla installation & using device manager to install ONLY the drivers and no extra flab/bloatware crap. When I put MS Office on the image, I only installed the pieces that people used, not everything. The fat 10GB recovery partition gets thrown out, don’t need that. I also rebuilt all my images every summer - because if all you do is take an old image and patch it up, it gets bloated & slow.

[falko]

Tom-Elliott said in ZSTD Compression:

@loosus456 My base images with all software had a disk usage of 48gb at it’s largest, but that was EVERYTHING I could put on. My “average” was about 25gb.

I use a single win7 image at my place (nearly all software etc.), it’s just under 30gb. Will make some time to do some tests