If you have space problems on a server that hosts MySQL database, it's good idea to use compression. Make sure you are using InnoDB storage engine.

In order to compress data on a table:

alter table YOUR_DB_NAME.YOUR_TABLE_NAME ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED;

The output in my case squeezed data 4X:

ls -lh users.ibd | awk '{print $5}'
 16G

After compression:

ls -lh users.ibd | awk '{print $5}'
 3.9G

NOTE: you have to use innodb_file_per_table in your configuration. We have previously talked about this procedure step by step.

#mysql #innodb #compression #alter #row_format #compressed