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Compress stored objects

Contributors netapp-lhalbert
PDFs

You can enable object compression to reduce the size of objects stored in StorageGRID, so that objects consume less storage.

Before you begin
About this task

By default, object compression is disabled. If you enable compression, StorageGRID attempts to compress each object when saving it, using lossless compression.

Note If you change this setting, it will take about one minute for the new setting to be applied. The configured value is cached for performance and scaling.

Before enabling object compression, be aware of the following:

  • You should not select Compress stored objects unless you know that the data being stored is compressible.

  • Applications that save objects to StorageGRID might compress objects before saving them. If a client application has already compressed an object before saving it to StorageGRID, selecting this option will not further reduce an object's size.

  • Don't select Compress stored objects if you are using NetApp FabricPool with StorageGRID.

  • If Compress stored objects is selected, S3 client applications should avoid performing GetObject operations that specify a range of bytes be returned. These "range read" operations are inefficient because StorageGRID must effectively uncompress the objects to access the requested bytes. GetObject operations that request a small range of bytes from a very large object are especially inefficient; for example, it is inefficient to read a 10 MB range from a 50 GB compressed object.

    If ranges are read from compressed objects, client requests can time out.

    Note If you need to compress objects and your client application must use range reads, increase the read timeout for the application.
Steps

  1. Select CONFIGURATION > System > Storage settings > Object compression.

  2. Select the Compress stored objects checkbox.

  3. Select Save.