Curious if anyone can help here. I've written out many Pyro Sims to VDBs lately using VDB convert node, then exporting with a File node set to write mode.

However, these files get huge, often 1gb per frame for a detailed sim. Is there any way to compress VDB's (not volumes, but specifically VDB's or perhaps even both so that the rendering pipeline can load files faster over the network)

I saw the Volume Compress node but unsure whether that one works on VDB or Houdini Volume files only.

Thanks for any help!

You should check out the pyro post process sop. You can use it instead of the vdb convert (it has a vdb convert node inside of it and some other stuff).
To reduce the size of your files on disk, make sure you remove any volumes you won't be using to render with (for example, if you're rendering smoke you'll only need density and vel, so you can remove any other volumes before caching). Then check out the cull volume and resample volumes tickboxes on the pyro post process sop. I often find culling vel and resampling it to 2x voxel scale saves a lot of diskspace and doesn't really effect the look of my renders.

pyro post process has wrapped up many things we have been doing for years.

delete vel where there is no density/heat, it's just useless data that isn't used in motion blur.
Speaking of vel, as mentioned above, resamples it to 1/2 the voxel res, usually fine for motion blur, but check
if your target renderer supports this! Usually just culling vel, and resampling it to 1/2 res will give you anywhere
from 30-50% reduction in file size. There is also the option to cast to 16bit instead of 32, this further saves space.

add a "pyro post process" and check literally everything on it except the very last field.

now compare sizes and enjoy

You guys are great, thanks super helpful

very helpful thread! thanks a lot!