US Patent 10013170 Intelligent data compression

Determining whether to compress data of a virtual storage unit based at least in part on: an I/O activity value of a virtual storage unit; a compressibility value of the virtual storage unit; and/or a capacity utilization of the storage system or a component thereof. For example, decision logic may be configured based on one or more of such parameters such that virtual storage units with relatively high I/O activities are rarely or never compressed, e.g., to avoid the disproportionately high increases in CPU and bandwidth resource consumption and I/O latency this could create. Decision logic may be configured such that, in general, the likelihood that a virtual storage unit will be compressed increases as: the I/O activity of the virtual storage unit decreases; the system capacity utilization increases; and/or as the compressibility value of the virtual storage unit increases.