Manual compression

In most cases, an automated compression policy is sufficient. However, if you want more control over compression, you can also manually compress specific chunks.

warning

Compression alters data on your disk, so always back up before you start.

Compress chunks manually

Before you start, you need a list of chunks to compress. In this example, you use a hypertable called example, and compress chunks older than three days.

Selecting chunks to compress

  1. At the psql prompt, select all chunks in the table example that are older than three days:

1. SELECT show_chunks('example', older_than => INTERVAL '3 days'); 2. This returns a list of chunks. Take a note of the chunk names:

show_chunks
1 _timescaledb_internal_hyper_1_2_chunk
2 _timescaledb_internal_hyper_1_3_chunk

When you are happy with the list of chunks, you can use the chunk names to manually compress each one.

Compressing chunks manually

  1. At the psql prompt, compress the chunk:

1. SELECT compress_chunk( '<chunk_name>'); 2. Check the results of the compression with this command:

``` 1. SELECT *

  1. FROM chunk_compression_stats('example'); ```

The results show the chunks for the given hypertable, their compression status, and some other statistics:

chunk_schema chunk_name compression_status before_compression_table_bytes before_compression_index_bytes before_compression_toast_bytes before_compression_total_bytes after_compression_table_bytes after_compression_index_bytes after_compression_toast_bytes after_compression_total_bytes node_name
_timescaledb_internal _hyper_1_1_chunk Compressed 8192 bytes 16 kB 8192 bytes 32 kB 8192 bytes 16 kB 8192 bytes 32 kB
_timescaledb_internal _hyper_1_20_chunk Uncompressed
3. Repeat for all chunks you want to compress.

Manually compress chunks in a single command

Alternatively, you can select the chunks and compress them in a single command by using the output of the show_chunks command to compress each one. For example, use this command to compress chunks between one and three weeks old if they are not already compressed:

2. SELECT compress_chunk(i, if_not_compressed => true)

4. FROM show_chunks(

6. 'example',

8. now()::timestamp - INTERVAL '1 week',

10. now()::timestamp - INTERVAL '3 weeks'

12. ) i;