With everyone raving over 8.5 I figured I'd step back and in keeping up this weeks theme of performance in the real world (for an 8.0.2 Lotus Notes client start up and memory comparison see 8.0.2-lotus-notes-relative-performance.htm) here is a run down of the 8.0.1 server side compression.

There really isn't a lot of documentation around this so hopefully this will help some people.

Starting in Domino 8.0.1 IBM Lotus added data compression to Notes databases. This can only be activated once you add the new Notes.ini setting:

CREATE_R8_DATABASES=1

This will then allow the new features to be enabled. However you need to do a copy-style compaction to have this take place. I use the following to activate the new compression on all mail files (case is important):

load compact -C -v -n -i mail

So what does this accomplish? Well, you probably won't see a massive reduction in NSF size, but real world you should see between 7% and 20% reduction just from following the above.

As an example a mail folder that was originally 22.8GB is size was reduced to 20.1GB, a 11% reduction is space. Not too bad for free. My mail file went from 177MB to 135MB, a 23% reduction. This goes to show that different NSF files will exhibit different compression amounts.

To summarize, to enable this feature:
1.        Make sure Domino is 8.0.1 or greater
2.        Add CREATE_R8_DATABASES=1 to the Notes.ini file
3.        From the Domino console run compact -C -v -n -i on the files you want to reduce
4.        Sit back and enjoy the free disk space