Compressing InnoDB tables

You can create tables where the data is stored in compressed form. Compression can help to improve both raw performance and scalability. Compression means less data is transferred between disk and memory, and it takes up less space on disk and in memory.

As per the MySQL documentation:

"Because processors and cache memories have increased in speed more than disk storage devices, many workloads are disk-bound. Data compression enables smaller database size, reduced I/O, and improved throughput, at the small cost of increased CPU utilization. Compression is especially valuable for read-intensive applications, on systems with enough RAM to keep frequently used data in memory. The benefits are amplified for tables with secondary indexes, because index data is compressed also."

To enable compression, you need to create or alter the table with the ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE option. You can vary the KEY_BLOCK_SIZE parameter, which uses a smaller page size on disk...