Cloudflare Tests Cache Transcoding to Reduce Storage Requirements
Cloudflare is testing 'cache transcoding' using the Zstandard compression algorithm to reduce storage requirements and bandwidth usage. By compressing eligible text content, the company aims to increase effective cache capacity with minimal CPU overhead.
Why it matters
This technical optimization demonstrates how infrastructure providers are balancing storage costs and processing power to improve web performance and efficiency.
InfoQ Homepage News Cloudflare Tests Cache Transcoding to Reduce Storage Requirements
According to the article, the additional processing required is relatively small, as the content is compressed once when it enters the cache and decompressed when served. Compression reduced the size of eligible content by about 2.8 times, allowing existing servers to store more data and reducing the amount of data transferred between data centers.
To achieve this, Cloudflare relies on Zstandard , the lossless compression algorithm developed by Facebook for real-time use, together with Pingora , its Rust-based proxy framework. Aashi Patel writes:
A small increase in CPU gives Cloudflare petabytes of effective cache capacity and reduces the data transferred between our data centers. The encoding cost is paid once when an asset enters the cache. The storage and bandwidth savings continue every single time that asset is reused.
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