Choosing and Configuring Data Compression

Guidelines for Choosing Data Compression

• GZIP compression uses more CPU resources than Snappy or LZO, but provides a higher compression ratio. GZip is often a good choice for cold data, which is accessed infrequently. Snappy or LZO are a better choice for hot data, which is accessed frequently.
• BZip2 can also produce more compression than GZip for some types of files, at the cost of some speed when compressing and decompressing. HBase does not support BZip2 compression.
• Snappy often performs better than LZO. It is worth running tests to see if you detect a significant difference.