Heya folks, Ned here again. As you’ve heard by now, Windows Server 2022 is available and supported for production deployments. This new OS brings many new features around security, storage, networkin...
Updated Nov 07, 2022
Version 5.0
Blog Post
SMB compression:
Don't be shy to add nice pics from WAC 2103.2 and latest File and Share Plugin too. NedPyle
WAC Gateway > connect to Server > Files and File Sharing > File Shares
Select a share (non administrative shares only). x$ share cause issues > Edit Share
If anyone thinks these bells and whistles are for enterprise only? Nope all the good stuff like SMB compression and SMB over QUIC is also functional on the very same OS "cobalt" release 21H2 of Windows 10 and 11.
And might is even partly backported to Vibranium (2004).
Here is an absolutely practical usecase #sarcasm of SMB compression in a Home NAS solution powered by Windows Server 2022 LTSC as SMB target / Windows 11 as a client.
What I am going to do?
- Copying WinSxS folder and an extracted ZIP of Intel NIC Driver 26.x package to have really much and compressable files. This is something everybody does everyday, right?
Results:
300 Mbytes/ seconds throughput on a 1 Gbit link for small files isn't that bad is it? I think it was 1 - 20 Mbyte/s with File Explorer.
Small files - NO SMB Compression - File Explorer - Windows 11 > Server 2022 LTSC
(seems not to use it still on Windows 11 - would be great if so)
Small files - SMB Compression - Robocopy - Windows 11 > Server 2022 LTSC
source files:
Win11 WinSXS (of all accessible files without elevation)
Intel Network Driver Package zip extracted
Total: 60.944 files, 7.27 GByte
HW:
Source and target are SSD disk so the Ethernet 1 G Link is the bottleneck. Plenty RAM and CPU available.
Remeber SMB compression is not enabled by default, so you need PowerShell or preferably Windows Admin Center to manage it on the particular network shares or network drives.
robocopy "i:\test\small files" "\\mhv02.tailspintoys.local\Repository\test compress" /s /e /mt:16 /w:1 /r:1 /compress
Fun Fact: deleting the files from a File Share via SMB remotely in Windows Explorer takes a lot longer than copying them to this very File Share via SMB compression, because of the "processed preview" 🙂