Compress data to reduce storage and I/O. Trade CPU cycles for space and bandwidth.
- LZ4: fast compression/decompression, moderate ratio
- Zstd: good balance of speed and ratio
- Gzip: widely compatible, slower
- Snappy: optimized for speed over ratio
Compress cold data aggressively, hot data lightly or not at all. Some formats (JPEG, MP4) don't compress further.