Home > Storage > PowerMax and VMAX > Storage Admin > Dell PowerMax: Data Reduction > Hardware acceleration
Each system is equipped with data reduction hardware that handles the actual compressing and decompressing of data. For PowerMax systems where deduplication applies the data reduction hardware also generates a unique hash ID needed for the deduplication process. The arrays are configured with one module per director which equates to 2 for each engine. The use of the modules reduces data reduction processing overhead. As a secondary function, software compression is automatically applied in the event of a fault or failure with one or more of the data reduction modules.