Huawei promises 90:1 compression with its new card

What happened?

Huawei has announced a hardware compression card integrated into its OceanProtect all-flash backup systems, claiming it achieves a data reduction ratio of up to 90:1 in suitable workloads, such as daily full backups of virtual machines that accumulate high redundancy. The company asserts this result outperforms the best currently available alternative in the enterprise storage market by 20%. This announcement comes at a time when data reduction is critical for the economic viability of flash storage in backup environments. Historically, disk-based backup systems offered compression ratios of 10:1 to 30:1, but the advent of advanced deduplication and hardware compression has enabled much higher figures. For example, Dell EMC Data Domain reported ratios of up to 60:1 in optimized workloads, while Veritas NetBackup achieved around 50:1. The leap to 90:1 represents a significant milestone, though it needs independent verification.

How does it work?

The compression is based on a family of proprietary algorithms called HZU, which uses a fast nonlinear transformation combined with lightweight context prediction methods. Huawei claims this approach surpasses the classic Lempel-Ziv paradigm, achieving a 30% increase in compression ratio under comparable conditions. The reduction process consists of four stages: preprocessing, inline multi-line and variable-length deduplication, HZBC compression, and byte-level compaction. The card offloads up to 22% of processing load from the system's main CPU. Nonlinear transformation is an advanced technique that identifies redundant patterns more efficiently than traditional methods. Huawei has patented both the deduplication and compression algorithms, indicating significant R&D investment. The hardware implementation allows these operations to run at line speed without affecting system performance, crucial in backup environments where backup windows are limited.

Why is it important?

All-flash storage is significantly more expensive per terabyte than disk storage. Therefore, more aggressive compression allows the same SSDs to offer much greater effective capacity, improving the economics of flash-based backup systems. Additionally, the new generation of OceanProtect is up to 50% faster than the previous generation, which achieved a 72:1 ratio. This advancement is especially relevant in a market where data generation grows at an annual rate of 25-30%, according to IDC. Companies are looking to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their backup infrastructures, and extreme compression can decrease the amount of physical storage needed, as well as energy and cooling costs. Compared to earlier technologies like software-based compression (e.g., gzip or bzip2), hardware implementation offers consistent performance without degrading backup speed.

What consequences will it have?

If Huawei's claims are confirmed in real-world environments, the card could be a game-changer in the enterprise backup market, pressuring competitors like Dell EMC, Veritas, or Commvault to improve their own compression technologies. However, the actual ratio will heavily depend on data types, retention policies, and deployment conditions. Potential customers will need to test the platform with their own datasets. Historically, aggressive compression claims have been met with skepticism; for example, in 2015, a vendor claimed 100:1 ratios that later proved achievable only in very specific lab conditions. Moreover, adoption of this technology could accelerate the transition from tape- or disk-based backups to all-flash solutions, especially in sectors like finance, healthcare, and telecommunications where restoration speed is critical. It could also spur innovation in compression algorithms from other manufacturers, benefiting the entire ecosystem.

What should readers know?

• The card is part of the OceanProtect X8100 and X9100 systems, which use QLC storage with an adaptive SLC zone for hot data. This combination balances performance and density.
• The HZU algorithms are patented and cover both deduplication and compression, making it difficult for other vendors to replicate without a license.
• No independent results have been published to verify the 90:1 ratio; therefore, caution and pilot testing are recommended before large-scale adoption.
• Compression effectiveness varies by data type: databases with high redundancy benefit the most, while already compressed media files (like JPEG or MP4) show little additional improvement.
• Huawei plans live demonstrations at events like Huawei Connect 2025, where attendees can see real-time performance.