I was pleasantly surprised to discover that 7zip is available for Centos and other Linux distributions. And it works just as it does on Windows. On Redhat-style distros you can get 7zip for Linux with the following:

yum -y install p7zip

It seems to me that I had to link /usr/bin/7za to /usr/local/bin7za (ln -s /usr/bin/7za /usr/local/bin/7za)

To unarchive….

7za x my_archive.7z

To archive a folder…

7za -mx=9 a Primary_Folder.7z Primary_Folder

(Note: The -mx=9 flag chooses the “Ultra” form of compression – see the man page for a ton of other commands)