The disk space occupied by a deleted row is only reclaimable via compaction and  given you have deleted some data and if the space is not reclaimed then probably you are hitting the bug  https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KUDU-1625   The jira stands unresolved. However if the goal is to delete the data and reclaim disk space, then you can drop partition (if range partition) in order to reclaim space.    Tombstone tablets have all their data removed from disk and don't consume significant resources. These tablet are necessary for correct operation of kudu. See - https://docs.cloudera.com/runtime/7.1.0/troubleshooting-kudu/topics/kudu-tombstoned-or-stopped-tablet-replicas.html   ... View more