To Compress or Not to Compress...

[JohnTwilley]

We have been running UEM without compressing the .Zip files (via Group Policy) without issue.

I figured it would be faster to not bother compressing the .Zip files, since they are all so small.

I have recently noted that a couple of our applications have rather large .Zip files  (~32 MB)

I tested compression to see if it helped with the size, and to was about 50%.  32 MB --> 16 MB

Still trying to determine if it effects the speed of Logon...

I figured I'd ask everyone what they were using in production?

To Compress, or not to compress...that is the question.

[Oreo_NL]

Hi John

I was wondering the same thing, compression takes up valueable time during logon/directflex.

uncompressed profiles can be alot bigger, if profile size aint an issue not compressing could have a positive impact on the overall user experience.

[DEMdev]

Hi JohnTwilley,

That's one of those lovely "it depends..." questions, I'm afraid.

From a performance perspective, you're basically balancing CPU vs network I/O. Depending on which resource you want to optimize for in your environment, compression may or may not be preferable. And if storage usage is a concern, that's a third component to add to that equation.

[JohnTwilley]

I'm looking it from a Logon Time perspective.

I want my users to logon as quickly as possible...so I was thinking that smaller .Zip files would transfer from the Isilon storage a bit quicker.

So far, it hasn't really panned out from a timing perspective.

• Smaller compressed files transfer faster, but take longer to unzip..
• Larger files transfer slower, but unzip faster...

I guess it boils down to the amount of zips and sizes... I'll just continue to do timing tests on the few environments that have large Zip files, and find the sweet spot.

John