If you manage a Windows Server 2016 file server and your company won’t allow Quotas or File Screening for your file server, or even worse hasn’t bothered defining data retention policies, you’ve probably found yourself running low on storage. A new feature in Windows Server 2016, Data Deduplication, can help you address the pesky problem of running low on space by, well, deduplicating your data.
Install the Data Deduplication Feature
In Windows Server 2016, Data Deduplication is a role that can be installed. You’ll find the role under File and Storage Services, File and iSCSI Services.
- In the Add Roles and Features wizard, select Server Roles.
- Expand File and Storage Services.
- Expand File and iSCSI Services.
- Select the Data Deduplication role.
5. Click Next until the Install button is active, and then click Install.
You can also use PowerShell. If you’re logged into the server you want to install the Data Deduplication role on, use this command to install the role:
Enable Data Deduplication for a Disk
The Data Deduplication role can be enabled in Server Manager, but before we enable the role, we’ll need to select the appropriate Usage Type that most closely resembles the workload we’re enabling Data Deduplication for. As of this writing, there are only three different Usage Types included with the Data Deduplication role:
- Default – Tuned specifically for general purpose file servers
- Hyper-V – Tuned specifically for VDI servers
- Backup – Tuned specifically for virtualized backup applications such as Microsoft DPM
- In Server Manager, select File and Storage Services.
2. Select Volumes from File and Storage Services.
3. Right-click the target volume and select Configure Data Deduplication.
4. Select the Usage Type from the drop-down box.
5. If you’d like to change the Data Deduplication schedule, you can do so now by clicking the Set Deduplication Schedule button.
6. Click OK.
Once done, you will be able to see Deduplication Savings from the same screen
This is the recommended workloads. If you’re running other workloads, or are curious, check out this Other considerations article from Microsoft. And if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into what can be changed, take a look at this Advanced Data Deduplication settings article.
