Hello together,

we are running Windows Server 2012 R2 (Datacenter) with 12 Virtual Servers. We are already using the buildin Data-Deduplication Feature for our fileserver, but currently running short on the SSDs Hosting the VMs and VM-Harddisks.

So, I read a lot of different opinions when it Comes down to data-deduplication on drives that are hosting VMs and/or their harddisks.

- Some Posts are cleary recommending to use the dd-Feature, because - obviously - for running several virtual machines, there is a lot of redundancy in Terms of data. (Each of the 12 VMs is running Windows Server 2012 R2 itself)

- Other Posts are telling, that dd will cause Problems when applied to virtual machines (the drives Hosting the VMS)
(Personally I don't get the Point, cause you can configure the Age of data to be deduplicated - so any "live-data" such as swap-files should not be affected?!)

So, what's best practice? Use dd (on the host) for VMs or not?