Elasticsearch 7.10 introduces a significant improvement in storage efficiency, reducing the size of indices created by up to 10%, which is particularly beneficial for teams managing large volumes of data, such as those using Elastic Observability and Elastic Security solutions. This enhancement is made possible by an update in Apache Lucene 8.7, which implements a more efficient compression method for stored fields. Traditionally, stored fields were compressed in blocks to enable fast random access, but now Elasticsearch uses larger blocks divided into sub-blocks with dictionaries, allowing for better compression without compromising retrieval speeds. This method leverages string deduplication and the use of dictionaries to significantly reduce data redundancy, especially in scenarios where data contains repetitive metadata, such as observability and security data. Existing indices will automatically adopt this improvement during their next merge, and users are encouraged to explore this feature in their deployments or through a free trial of Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud.