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Enabling Hypercore & Best Practices

Apply compression and manage data lifecycle

Tiger Data 101 → TimescaleDB | Section: Hypercore | ⏱ Time: ~3 min

TimescaleDB allows you to keep recent chunks uncompressed (hot) while compressing older chunks (cold), all in the same hypertable:

sensor_readings
├── Jan 2025 (compressed, 50MB) ← cold, compressed, queryable
├── Feb 2025 (compressed, 48MB)
├── Mar 2025 (compressed, 52MB)
└── Apr 2025 (uncompressed, 500MB) ← hot, fast writes, recent data

Benefits:

  • Recent data stays fast for writes and quick queries
  • Old data compressed for storage savings
  • No schema changes needed—hypertable hides the complexity

Use compression when:

  • Storing historical data you query infrequently
  • Data has patterns (sensors, metrics, events)
  • You need to reduce storage costs significantly
  • Analytical queries outweigh random access

Avoid compression when:

  • Data is frequently updated or deleted
  • You need ultra-low latency random access
  • Compression would add overhead that doesn't save space

Knowledge Check

Question 1 of 3

A. Kempower achieved approximately what storage footprint reduction using hypercore compression?