# Any experience with ES and Data Compressing Filesystems?

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 16, 2014, 10:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695 "2014-07-16T10:56:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![german23](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/german23/32/11052_2.png) [@german23](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/german23)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 10:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/1 "2014-07-16T10:56:36Z")

</div>

Hey Guys,

to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
compression-rate in some tests).

Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.

Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?

Thanks for responding

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### Author: ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 10:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/2 "2014-07-16T10:58:04Z")

</div>

There's a few previous threads on this topic in the archives, though I  
don't immediately recall seeing any performance metrics unfortunately.

Regards,  
Mark Walkom

Infrastructure Engineer  
Campaign Monitor  
email: [markw@campaignmonitor.com](mailto:markw@campaignmonitor.com)  
web: [www.campaignmonitor.com](http://www.campaignmonitor.com)

On 16 July 2014 20:56, horst knete [baduncle23@hotmail.de](mailto:baduncle23@hotmail.de) wrote:

> Hey Guys,
> 
> to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> compression-rate in some tests).
> 
> Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> 
> Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> 
> Thanks for responding
> 
> --  
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
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### Author: ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 12:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/3 "2014-07-16T12:28:36Z")

</div>

You will not gain much advantage because ES already compresses data on disk  
with LZF, ZFS is using LZ4, which compression output is quite similar. In  
the file system statistics you will notice the compression ratio, and this  
will be no good value. So instead of having ZFS trying to compress where  
not much can be gained, you should switch it off.

Jörg

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 12:56 PM, horst knete [baduncle23@hotmail.de](mailto:baduncle23@hotmail.de) wrote:

> Hey Guys,
> 
> to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> compression-rate in some tests).
> 
> Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> 
> Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> 
> Thanks for responding
> 
> --  
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> "elasticsearch" group.  
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
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> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com)  
> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)  
> .  
> For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).

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### Author: ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 12:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/4 "2014-07-16T12:35:33Z")

</div>

Ups, not true, Elasticsearch uses Lucene codec compression, and this is  
also LZ4 (LZF only for backwards compatibility)

Here are some numbers:

[http://blog.jpountz.net/post/33247161884/efficient-compressed-stored-fields-with-lucene](http://blog.jpountz.net/post/33247161884/efficient-compressed-stored-fields-with-lucene)

Jörg

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 2:28 PM, [joergprante@gmail.com](mailto:joergprante@gmail.com) \<  
[joergprante@gmail.com](mailto:joergprante@gmail.com)\> wrote:

> You will not gain much advantage because ES already compresses data on  
> disk with LZF, ZFS is using LZ4, which compression output is quite similar.  
> In the file system statistics you will notice the compression ratio, and  
> this will be no good value. So instead of having ZFS trying to compress  
> where not much can be gained, you should switch it off.
> 
> Jörg
> 
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 12:56 PM, horst knete [baduncle23@hotmail.de](mailto:baduncle23@hotmail.de)  
> wrote:
> 
> > Hey Guys,
> > 
> > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > compression-rate in some tests).
> > 
> > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > 
> > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > 
> > Thanks for responding
> > 
> > --  
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> > "elasticsearch" group.  
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
> > email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).  
> > To view this discussion on the web visit  
> > [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com)  
> > [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/6c6c806a-f638-4139-a080-3da7670f0eca%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)  
> > .  
> > For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).

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### Author: ![otisg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/otisg/32/492_2.png) [@otisg](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/otisg)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2014, 5:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/5 "2014-07-19T05:21:20Z")

</div>

Hi Horst,

I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but should you  
try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.

## Otis

Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:

> Hey Guys,
> 
> to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> compression-rate in some tests).
> 
> Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> 
> Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> 
> Thanks for responding

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### Author: ![german23](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/german23/32/11052_2.png) [@german23](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/german23)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2014, 5:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/6 "2014-07-21T05:58:02Z")

</div>

Hey guys,

we have mounted an btrfs file system with the compression method "zlib" for  
testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied one of the indices  
on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and still got the size  
of 50gb 😕

I will further try it with other compression methods and will report here

Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis Gospodnetic:

> Hi Horst,
> 
> I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but should  
> you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.
> 
> ## Otis
> 
> Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
> Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)
> 
> On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:
> 
> > Hey Guys,
> > 
> > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > compression-rate in some tests).
> > 
> > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > 
> > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > 
> > Thanks for responding

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### Author: ![Patrick\_Proniewski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patrick\_Proniewski](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Patrick_Proniewski)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2014, 6:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/7 "2014-07-21T06:48:00Z")

</div>

Hi,

gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it can be interesting for closed indices, but for live data I would not recommend it.  
Also, you must know that:

Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices,  
ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks,

-\> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your filesystem uses 4k blocks and you add FS compression, you will probably have a very small gain, if any. I've tried on ZFS:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-lz4  
zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES

If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a compressed filesystem does show some benefit:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-lz4 -\> compressratio 1.73x  
zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-gzip -\> compressratio 2.27x  
zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES

But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal for IO (ES read or write one 4k block -\> your FS must read or write a 128k block).

On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete [baduncle23@hotmail.de](mailto:baduncle23@hotmail.de) wrote:

> Hey guys,
> 
> we have mounted an btrfs file system with the compression method "zlib" for  
> testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied one of the indices  
> on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and still got the size  
> of 50gb 😕
> 
> I will further try it with other compression methods and will report here
> 
> Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis Gospodnetic:
> 
> > Hi Horst,
> > 
> > I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but should  
> > you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.
> > 
> > ## Otis
> > 
> > Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
> > Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)
> > 
> > On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:
> > 
> > > Hey Guys,
> > > 
> > > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression file  
> > > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices. (It  
> > > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > > compression-rate in some tests).
> > > 
> > > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > > 
> > > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS or  
> > > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > > 
> > > Thanks for responding

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### Author: ![german23](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/german23/32/11052_2.png) [@german23](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/german23)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2014, 6:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/8 "2014-08-04T06:43:12Z")

</div>

Hi again,

a quick report regarding compression:

we are using a 3-TB btrfs-volume with 32k block size now which reduced the  
amount of data from 3,2 TB to 1,1TB without any segnificant performance  
losses ( we are using a 8 CPU, 20 GB Memory machine with an iSCSI.Link to  
the volume ).

So for us i can only suggest using the btrfs-volume for long term storage.

Am Montag, 21. Juli 2014 08:48:12 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Proniewski:

> Hi,
> 
> gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it can be  
> interesting for closed indices, but for live data I would not recommend it.  
> Also, you must know that:
> 
> Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices,  
> ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks,
> 
> -\> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your filesystem uses 4k  
> blocks and you add FS compression, you will probably have a very small  
> gain, if any. I've tried on ZFS:
> 
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-lz4  
> zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> 
> If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a compressed filesystem  
> does show some benefit:
> 
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0%  
> /zdata/ES-lz4 -\> compressratio 1.73x  
> zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0%  
> /zdata/ES-gzip -\> compressratio 2.27x  
> zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> 
> But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal for IO (ES read  
> or write one 4k block -\> your FS must read or write a 128k block).
> 
> On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete \<[badun...@hotmail.de](mailto:badun...@hotmail.de) \<javascript:\>\>  
> wrote:
> 
> > Hey guys,
> > 
> > we have mounted an btrfs file system with the compression method "zlib"  
> > for  
> > testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied one of the  
> > indices  
> > on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and still got the  
> > size  
> > of 50gb 😕
> > 
> > I will further try it with other compression methods and will report  
> > here
> > 
> > Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis Gospodnetic:
> > 
> > > Hi Horst,
> > > 
> > > I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but should  
> > > you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.
> > > 
> > > ## Otis
> > > 
> > > Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
> > > Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)
> > > 
> > > On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hey Guys,
> > > > 
> > > > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression  
> > > > file  
> > > > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices.  
> > > > (It  
> > > > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > > > compression-rate in some tests).
> > > > 
> > > > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > > > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > > > 
> > > > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS  
> > > > or  
> > > > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks for responding

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2014, 8:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/9 "2014-08-04T08:51:50Z")

</div>

What sort of data are you indexing? When you said performance impact was  
minimal, how minimal and at what points are you seeing it?

Regards,  
Mark Walkom

Infrastructure Engineer  
Campaign Monitor  
email: [markw@campaignmonitor.com](mailto:markw@campaignmonitor.com)  
web: [www.campaignmonitor.com](http://www.campaignmonitor.com)

On 4 August 2014 16:43, horst knete [baduncle23@hotmail.de](mailto:baduncle23@hotmail.de) wrote:

> Hi again,
> 
> a quick report regarding compression:
> 
> we are using a 3-TB btrfs-volume with 32k block size now which reduced the  
> amount of data from 3,2 TB to 1,1TB without any segnificant performance  
> losses ( we are using a 8 CPU, 20 GB Memory machine with an iSCSI.Link to  
> the volume ).
> 
> So for us i can only suggest using the btrfs-volume for long term storage.
> 
> Am Montag, 21. Juli 2014 08:48:12 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Proniewski:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it can be  
> > interesting for closed indices, but for live data I would not recommend it.  
> > Also, you must know that:
> > 
> > Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices,  
> > ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks,
> > 
> > -\> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your filesystem uses  
> > 4k blocks and you add FS compression, you will probably have a very small  
> > gain, if any. I've tried on ZFS:
> > 
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-lz4  
> > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> > 
> > If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a compressed filesystem  
> > does show some benefit:
> > 
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0%  
> > /zdata/ES-lz4 -\> compressratio 1.73x  
> > zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0%  
> > /zdata/ES-gzip -\> compressratio 2.27x  
> > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> > 
> > But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal for IO (ES read  
> > or write one 4k block -\> your FS must read or write a 128k block).
> > 
> > On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete [badun...@hotmail.de](mailto:badun...@hotmail.de) wrote:
> > 
> > > Hey guys,
> > > 
> > > we have mounted an btrfs file system with the compression method "zlib"  
> > > for  
> > > testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied one of the  
> > > indices  
> > > on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and still got the  
> > > size  
> > > of 50gb 😕
> > > 
> > > I will further try it with other compression methods and will report  
> > > here
> > > 
> > > Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis Gospodnetic:
> > > 
> > > > Hi Horst,
> > > > 
> > > > I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but  
> > > > should  
> > > > you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.
> > > > 
> > > > ## Otis
> > > > 
> > > > Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
> > > > Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)
> > > > 
> > > > On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > Hey Guys,
> > > > > 
> > > > > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression  
> > > > > file  
> > > > > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices.  
> > > > > (It  
> > > > > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > > > > compression-rate in some tests).
> > > > > 
> > > > > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > > > > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like BTRFS  
> > > > > or  
> > > > > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > > > > 
> > > > > Thanks for responding
> 
> --  
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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![german23](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/german23/32/11052_2.png) [@german23](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/german23)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2014, 10:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/10 "2014-08-04T10:41:33Z")

</div>

We are indexing all sort of events (Windows, Linux, Apache, Netflow and so  
on...) and impact is defined in speed of the Kibana GUI / how long it takes  
to load 7 or 14 days of data. Thats what is important for my colleagues.

Am Montag, 4. August 2014 10:52:25 UTC+2 schrieb Mark Walkom:

> What sort of data are you indexing? When you said performance impact was  
> minimal, how minimal and at what points are you seeing it?
> 
> Regards,  
> Mark Walkom
> 
> Infrastructure Engineer  
> Campaign Monitor  
> email: [ma...@campaignmonitor.com](mailto:ma...@campaignmonitor.com) \<javascript:\>  
> web: [www.campaignmonitor.com](http://www.campaignmonitor.com)
> 
> On 4 August 2014 16:43, horst knete \<[badun...@hotmail.de](mailto:badun...@hotmail.de) \<javascript:\>\>  
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi again,
> > 
> > a quick report regarding compression:
> > 
> > we are using a 3-TB btrfs-volume with 32k block size now which reduced  
> > the amount of data from 3,2 TB to 1,1TB without any segnificant performance  
> > losses ( we are using a 8 CPU, 20 GB Memory machine with an iSCSI.Link to  
> > the volume ).
> > 
> > So for us i can only suggest using the btrfs-volume for long term storage.
> > 
> > Am Montag, 21. Juli 2014 08:48:12 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Proniewski:
> > 
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it can be  
> > > interesting for closed indices, but for live data I would not recommend it.  
> > > Also, you must know that:
> > > 
> > > Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices,  
> > > ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks,
> > > 
> > > -\> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your filesystem uses  
> > > 4k blocks and you add FS compression, you will probably have a very small  
> > > gain, if any. I've tried on ZFS:
> > > 
> > > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> > > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES-lz4  
> > > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> > > 
> > > If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a compressed filesystem  
> > > does show some benefit:
> > > 
> > > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on  
> > > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0%  
> > > /zdata/ES-lz4 -\> compressratio 1.73x  
> > > zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0%  
> > > /zdata/ES-gzip -\> compressratio 2.27x  
> > > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> > > 
> > > But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal for IO (ES  
> > > read or write one 4k block -\> your FS must read or write a 128k block).
> > > 
> > > On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete [badun...@hotmail.de](mailto:badun...@hotmail.de) wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hey guys,
> > > > 
> > > > we have mounted an btrfs file system with the compression method  
> > > > "zlib" for  
> > > > testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied one of the  
> > > > indices  
> > > > on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and still got the  
> > > > size  
> > > > of 50gb 😕
> > > > 
> > > > I will further try it with other compression methods and will report  
> > > > here
> > > > 
> > > > Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis Gospodnetic:
> > > > 
> > > > > Hi Horst,
> > > > > 
> > > > > I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg mentioned, but  
> > > > > should  
> > > > > you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your findings/observations.
> > > > > 
> > > > > ## Otis
> > > > > 
> > > > > Performance Monitoring \* Log Analytics \* Search Analytics  
> > > > > Solr & Elasticsearch Support \* [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/)
> > > > > 
> > > > > On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst knete wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > > Hey Guys,
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use an compression  
> > > > > > file  
> > > > > > system, which allows us transparent compression for the es-indices.  
> > > > > > (It  
> > > > > > seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got up to 65%  
> > > > > > compression-rate in some tests).
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux Filesystem which  
> > > > > > unfortunately dont have the transparent compression ability.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Anyone of you got experience with compression file systems like  
> > > > > > BTRFS or  
> > > > > > ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big performance losses?
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Thanks for responding
> > 
> > --  
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> > "elasticsearch" group.  
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
> > email to [elasticsearc...@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearc...@googlegroups.com) \<javascript:\>.  
> > To view this discussion on the web visit  
> > [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com)  
> > [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)  
> > .  
> > For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2014, 12:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/11 "2014-08-04T12:06:32Z")

</div>

You are aware of the fact the kind of search performance you mean  
depends on RAM and virtual memory organization of the cluster, not on  
storage, so "without any siginifcant performace losses" could be expected ?

Jörg

Am 04.08.14 12:41, schrieb horst knete:

> We are indexing all sort of events (Windows, Linux, Apache, Netflow  
> and so on...) and impact is defined in speed of the Kibana GUI / how  
> long it takes to load 7 or 14 days of data. Thats what is important  
> for my colleagues.
> 
> Am Montag, 4. August 2014 10:52:25 UTC+2 schrieb Mark Walkom:
> 
> ```
> What sort of data are you indexing? When you said performance
> impact was minimal, how minimal and at what points are you seeing it?
> 
> Regards,
> Mark Walkom
> 
> Infrastructure Engineer
> Campaign Monitor
> email: ma...@campaignmonitor.com
> web: www.campaignmonitor.com <http://www.campaignmonitor.com>
> 
> On 4 August 2014 16:43, horst knete <badun...@hotmail.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi again,
> 
> a quick report regarding compression:
> 
> we are using a 3-TB btrfs-volume with 32k block size now which
> reduced the amount of data from 3,2 TB to 1,1TB without any
> segnificant performance losses ( we are using a 8 CPU, 20 GB
> Memory machine with an iSCSI.Link to the volume ).
> 
> So for us i can only suggest using the btrfs-volume for long
> term storage.
> 
> Am Montag, 21. Juli 2014 08:48:12 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick
> Proniewski:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it
> can be interesting for closed indices, but for live data I
> would not recommend it.
> Also, you must know that:
> 
> Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices,
> ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks,
> 
> -> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your
> filesystem uses 4k blocks and you add FS compression, you
> will probably have a very small gain, if any. I've tried
> on ZFS:
> 
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity
> Mounted on
> zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0%  
> /zdata/ES-lz4
> zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> 
> If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a
> compressed filesystem does show some benefit:
> 
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity
> Mounted on
> zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0%  
> /zdata/ES-lz4 -> compressratio 1.73x
> zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0%  
> /zdata/ES-gzip -> compressratio 2.27x
> zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES
> 
> But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal
> for IO (ES read or write one 4k block -> your FS must read
> or write a 128k block).
> 
> On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete
> <badun...@hotmail.de> wrote:
> 
> > Hey guys,
> >
> > we have mounted an btrfs file system with the
> compression method "zlib" for
> > testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied
> one of the indices
> > on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and
> still got the size
> > of 50gb :/
> >
> > I will further try it with other compression methods and
> will report here
> >
> > Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis
> Gospodnetic:
> >>
> >> Hi Horst,
> >>
> >> I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg
> mentioned, but should
> >> you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your
> findings/observations.
> >>
> >> Otis
> >> --
> >> Performance Monitoring * Log Analytics * Search Analytics
> >> Solr & Elasticsearch Support * http://sematext.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst
> knete wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hey Guys,
> >>>
> >>> to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use
> an compression file
> >>> system, which allows us transparent compression for
> the es-indices. (It
> >>> seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got
> up to 65%
> >>> compression-rate in some tests).
> >>>
> >>> Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux
> Filesystem which
> >>> unfortunately dont have the transparent compression
> ability.
> >>>
> >>> Anyone of you got experience with compression file
> systems like BTRFS or
> >>> ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big
> performance losses?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for responding
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from
> it, send an email to elasticsearc...@googlegroups.com.
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> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
> 
> ```
> 
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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![german23](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/german23/32/11052_2.png) [@german23](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/german23)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2014, 12:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/12 "2014-08-04T12:56:44Z")

</div>

Hi,

i wasn´t really that aware that this could only led to higher usage of CPU  
and RAM, but to say so, the cpu load has indeed increased by about 20-30%  
compared to not compressing the storage. The RAM usage didnt increase by a  
big deal.

IMHO a bit higher CPU-load is definietly worth it, if you could save about  
60% of your hard disk space - every financial manager would agree.

Am Montag, 4. August 2014 14:06:47 UTC+2 schrieb Jörg Prante:

> You are aware of the fact the kind of search performance you mean  
> depends on RAM and virtual memory organization of the cluster, not on  
> storage, so "without any siginifcant performace losses" could be expected  
> ?
> 
> Jörg
> 
> Am 04.08.14 12:41, schrieb horst knete:
> 
> > We are indexing all sort of events (Windows, Linux, Apache, Netflow  
> > and so on...) and impact is defined in speed of the Kibana GUI / how  
> > long it takes to load 7 or 14 days of data. Thats what is important  
> > for my colleagues.
> > 
> > Am Montag, 4. August 2014 10:52:25 UTC+2 schrieb Mark Walkom:
> > 
> > ```
> > What sort of data are you indexing? When you said performance 
> > impact was minimal, how minimal and at what points are you seeing 
> > 
> > ```
> 
> it?
> 
> > ```
> > Regards, 
> > Mark Walkom 
> > 
> > Infrastructure Engineer 
> > Campaign Monitor 
> > email: ma...@campaignmonitor.com 
> > web: www.campaignmonitor.com <http://www.campaignmonitor.com> 
> > 
> > On 4 August 2014 16:43, horst knete <badun...@hotmail.de> wrote: 
> > 
> > Hi again, 
> > 
> > a quick report regarding compression: 
> > 
> > we are using a 3-TB btrfs-volume with 32k block size now which 
> > reduced the amount of data from 3,2 TB to 1,1TB without any 
> > segnificant performance losses ( we are using a 8 CPU, 20 GB 
> > Memory machine with an iSCSI.Link to the volume ). 
> > 
> > So for us i can only suggest using the btrfs-volume for long 
> > term storage. 
> > 
> > Am Montag, 21. Juli 2014 08:48:12 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick 
> > Proniewski: 
> > 
> > Hi, 
> > 
> > gzip/zlib compression is very bad for performance, so it 
> > can be interesting for closed indices, but for live data I 
> > would not recommend it. 
> > Also, you must know that: 
> > 
> > Compression using lz4 is already enabled into indices, 
> > ES/Lucene/Java usually read&write 4k blocks, 
> > 
> > -> hence, compression is achieved on 4k blocks. If your 
> > filesystem uses 4k blocks and you add FS compression, you 
> > will probably have a very small gain, if any. I've tried 
> > on ZFS: 
> > 
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity 
> > Mounted on 
> > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0%   
> > /zdata/ES-lz4 
> > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES 
> > 
> > If you are using a larger block size, like 128k, a 
> > compressed filesystem does show some benefit: 
> > 
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity 
> > Mounted on 
> > zdata/ES-lz4 1.1T 1.1G 1.1T 0%   
> > /zdata/ES-lz4 -> compressratio 1.73x 
> > zdata/ES-gzip 1.1T 901M 1.1T 0%   
> > /zdata/ES-gzip -> compressratio 2.27x 
> > zdata/ES 1.1T 1.9G 1.1T 0% /zdata/ES 
> > 
> > But a file system block larger than 4k is very suboptimal 
> > for IO (ES read or write one 4k block -> your FS must read 
> > or write a 128k block). 
> > 
> > On 21 juil. 2014, at 07:58, horst knete 
> > <badun...@hotmail.de> wrote: 
> > 
> > > Hey guys, 
> > > 
> > > we have mounted an btrfs file system with the 
> > compression method "zlib" for 
> > > testing purposes on our elasticsearchserver and copied 
> > one of the indices 
> > > on the btrfs volume, unfortunately it had no success and 
> > still got the size 
> > > of 50gb :/ 
> > > 
> > > I will further try it with other compression methods and 
> > will report here 
> > > 
> > > Am Samstag, 19. Juli 2014 07:21:20 UTC+2 schrieb Otis 
> > Gospodnetic: 
> > >> 
> > >> Hi Horst, 
> > >> 
> > >> I wouldn't bother with this for the reasons Joerg 
> > mentioned, but should 
> > >> you try it anyway, I'd love to hear your 
> > findings/observations. 
> > >> 
> > >> Otis 
> > >> -- 
> > >> Performance Monitoring * Log Analytics * Search Analytics 
> > >> Solr & Elasticsearch Support * http://sematext.com/ 
> > >> 
> > >> 
> > >> 
> > >> On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 6:56:36 AM UTC-4, horst 
> > knete wrote: 
> > >>> 
> > >>> Hey Guys, 
> > >>> 
> > >>> to save a lot of hard disk space, we are going to use 
> > an compression file 
> > >>> system, which allows us transparent compression for 
> > the es-indices. (It 
> > >>> seems like es-indices are very good compressable, got 
> > up to 65% 
> > >>> compression-rate in some tests). 
> > >>> 
> > >>> Currently the indices are laying at a ext4-Linux 
> > Filesystem which 
> > >>> unfortunately dont have the transparent compression 
> > ability. 
> > >>> 
> > >>> Anyone of you got experience with compression file 
> > systems like BTRFS or 
> > >>> ZFS/OpenZFS and can tell us if this led to big 
> > performance losses? 
> > >>> 
> > >>> Thanks for responding 
> > 
> > -- 
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> > To view this discussion on the web visit 
> > 
> > ```
> 
> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com)
> 
> > ```
> > <
> > 
> > ```
> 
> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/1f9bf509-b185-4c66-99c5-d8f69e95bea8%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)\>.
> 
> > ```
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
> > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. 
> > 
> > ```
> > 
> > --  
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> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/211eebfe-768f-4ea9-a1c9-2c93b870e464%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/211eebfe-768f-4ea9-a1c9-2c93b870e464%40googlegroups.com)
> 
> > \<  
> > [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/211eebfe-768f-4ea9-a1c9-2c93b870e464%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/211eebfe-768f-4ea9-a1c9-2c93b870e464%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)\>.
> 
> > For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).

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---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/any-experience-with-es-and-data-compressing-filesystems/18695/13 "2017-07-06T01:11:04Z")

</div>


