Home > Storage > PowerMax and VMAX > Storage Admin > Dell PowerMax: Data Reduction > Adaptive Compression Engine overview
The Adaptive Compression Engine (ACE) is the combination of multiple components to deliver the performance expected from an all flash storage system and maintain data storage efficiency. Incoming data is compressed inline using hardware-based compression with software compression in place and used as needed. Intelligent algorithms learn from the incoming workload to dynamically create a customized backend catering to the incoming workload. The Adaptive Compression Engine changes the backend compression pool layout as needed to ensure the system operates at optimal levels for both performance and space efficiency. Using internal statistics, algorithms identify the busiest data in the system allowing it to skip the compression process. The result minimizes decompression overhead on the system for data that is accessed the most. Working together, these functions allow data reduction to deliver great performance and efficiently manage back-end capacity usage.