Home > Storage > PowerMax and VMAX > Storage Admin > Dell PowerMax: Data Reduction > Introduction to data reduction
In PowerMax data storage systems data reduction combines the Adaptive Compression Engine (ACE) and inline deduplication to provide a highly performing space efficient platform. Data reduction allows users to write more host data than the total amount of usable capacity available. Compression and deduplication are two different functions that work together. Compression reduces the size of datasets and deduplication identifies identical datasets and stores a single instance. Performing these functions in parallel allows the system to be capacity efficient and deliver optimal performance.