Column compression

Kudu allows per-column compression using the LZ4, Snappy, or zlib compression codecs.

By default, columns that are Bitshuffle-encoded are inherently compressed with the LZ4 compression. Otherwise, columns are stored uncompressed. Consider using compression if reducing storage space is more important than raw scan performance.

Every data set will compress differently, but in general LZ4 is the most efficient codec, while zlib will compress to the smallest data sizes. Bitshuffle-encoded columns are automatically compressed using LZ4, so it is not recommended to apply additional compression on top of this encoding.