A new approach to data compression

Compression is as old as personal computing, but it is used today mainly for backup and second tier storage. Many attempts to address the challenges of primary storage compression have failed because of degraded performance and lack of transparency.

Because compression of primary storage data has been difficult to address, most efforts in recent years have been directed at compression during remote transport. This type of compression saves bandwidth but does nothing to reduce stored data volumes. Attempts to compress primary storage data interfered with user workflow and required running software on both storage and end-user devices. These solutions were based on cumbersome sequential access (decompress, update, recompress), work at file-level granularity, or both. They also wasted client resources and introduced unacceptable latencies. Storwize technology processes in real-time only the data required for a particular user or application, and fully supports every type of file access. The Storwize method offloads and centralizes compression in a powerful, dedicated appliance, eliminating performance degradation and in most cases actually improving it.