2025-02-13

Every once in awhile I discover a unix tool that is so amazing that
I really just can't believe I lived without it.

Today, I'm talking pigz: https://zlib.net/pigz/

pigz stands for parallel implementation of gzip and you can
gzip files utilizing multiple cores on your server.

I honestly can't believe how insanely useful this is. At work we
have multi-hundred-gigabyte files and folders that we have to backup
and store.

Out of sheer habit and ignorance we would gzip those files and it
would take ages. We stumbled upon pigz and no joke, with the power
of our Xeons we have like an 8-fold decrease in the time it takes
to compress those files.

Literally everone needs to start using pigz right now.