Handle edge cases in compression

**Feature request**
It would be great to have compression for utils.

**Use case**
Many users need this functionality for production deployments.

**Implementation idea**
Add a new config option `enable_compression` with default `false`.

Start by locating the utils implementation and the existing configuration handling for options such as enable_compression. Clarify which utility output or data should be compressed and which edge cases are required; done means compression is available for that target and enable_compression defaults to false.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.