When we moved to a Pure Storage SAN, one of their boastful claims was their data compression and how good & fast it was. When we compared it SQL Server PAGE compression and presented them with our results... they shut up...
So, in our situation, sticking with SQL Server compression yielded the best results... Both in terms of speed and size on disk... BUT... As Kevin said, testing is the only way to know for sure what will work best in your specific environment.
Did you hit up Argenis Fernandez with your testing and results? I am sure he would be interested in that.
Hopefully my original post didn't sound like I was bagging on Pure Storage... That wasn't my intention. Moving from spinning rust to Pure was like moving from grand dad's old Ford to a Koenigsegg...
As far as what got communicated to who... It was roughly 3 years ago and my personal, hands on, involvement was pretty limited. I have no idea who our contact at Pure was at that time.
I just remember working through the test plans with the two DBA's who worked on the project, helping to do some follow-up validation and general discussions about what needed to be done with index maintenance procedures in terms of keeping or dropping the existing SQL Server PAGE/ROW compression setting.
Of course that was 3 years ago, so I have no idea if Pure has updates their proprietary compression algorithm since then. It may be worth a retest...
Neither of the two aforementioned DBA's are still with the company but I may try to contact them and see if either held on to their original test procedures.
Keven - Let me know if you have specific tests you'd like to see run... I'm always interested in your insights and I'd be happy to work with you if you're interested.
I would love to do some playing around with you on this, but with compressed data testing can be somewhat of a mixed bag. If you have (or fabricate) data that fits well into a particular compression scheme things can rock, if not they may not. I am also unbelievably behind on work/life due to some really bad medical issues over the last 8 months. :crying: My time posting on here is something of an escape for me, and even that has been greatly restricted.
BTW, I love your vehicular comparison!! 🙂
I won't make it to many SQL Saturday's this year, but here's hoping we get the chance to catch up at one anyway.
Best,
Kevin G. Boles
SQL Server Consultant
SQL MVP 2007-2012
TheSQLGuru on googles mail service