I'm not getting any additional clarification on the posts I left here (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/4293d697-08ec-48e9-8da8-823046806f13/compression-in-recovery-storage-and-bmr) so I'm starting a new post to get a specific answer.
Is compression active TODAY in the Recovery Storage volumes? If not, when will it be implemented?
Your preview FAQ says the following but my data is not getting compressed (usage matches raw data size). So the size used for charges is exactly the same as the amount of data I am backing up. Obviously that doesn't match up with the FAQ for the preview which reads as follows:
- Will
the number of GB I am charged for be exactly the same as the amount of data I am backing up from my on-premises server?
- No. There are several factors that will impact the amount of storage you are consuming in the Backup service including, but not limited to, compression ratios, the rate at which the data changes, and the number of backup copies you elect to retain in the service.
Compression is critical. Today I can back up to Amazon S3 using DPM and the Amazon Storage Gateway using iSCSI. The data is then replicated to Amazon S3. Snapshots in Amazon EBS can be compressed and cost $0.095/GB. You're planning to charge $0.50/GB ($0.25/GB for the preview) which is not competitive unless you are getting very good compression rates. So the answer to this question is very important to those of us looking to protect large amounts of storage.
Thanks in advance for your clarification on this critical item.
Rob