Elasticsearch 2.0 introduced significant improvements in storage requirements, including the best_compression option and default enabling of doc_values, which can reduce the hardware footprint of clusters by 15-25%. These enhancements leverage Lucene 5.0's DEFLATE algorithm to achieve compression ratios between 0.429 and 1.117, depending on configuration and data characteristics. The article discusses the implications of these changes, noting that while compression can lead to performance penalties during decompression, these are mitigated in specific query scenarios. Additionally, doc_values offer a more efficient way to manage analytics workloads by storing data off the JVM heap, thus reducing the constraints on hardware requirements. Users are encouraged to conduct their own experiments to understand the impact of these features on their specific data sets and configurations.