Selective compression of unstructured data

A computer program product for selectively compressing unstructured data, the computer program product comprising a computer-readable medium having computer-usable program code embodied therein, the computer-usable program code comprising:

• computer-usable program code to prepare, at a host system, a data blob for storage on a storage system, the data blob comprising unstructured data;
• computer-usable program code to encode, at the host system, the data blob such that a first portion of the data blob is encoded with a first color and a second portion of the data blob is encoded with a second color different from the first color, the first color indicating that an associated portion should remain uncompressed and the second color indicating that an associated portion should be compressed;
• computer-usable program code to transmit the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system;
• computer-usable program code to detect, by the storage virtualization layer, the first color of the first portion and the second color of the second portion;
• computer-usable program code to store, on the storage system, the first portion in an uncompressed format;
• computer-usable program code to compress, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion;
• and
• computer-usable program code to store, on the storage system, the second portion in a compressed format.

A system for selectively compressing unstructured data, the system comprising:

• at least one processor;
• at least one memory device coupled to the at least one processor and storing instructions for execution on the at least one processor, the instructions causing the at least one processor to;
• prepare, at a host system, a data blob for storage on a storage system, the data blob comprising unstructured data;
• encode, at the host system, the data blob such that a first portion of the data blob is encoded with a first color and a second portion of the data blob is encoded with a second color different from the first color, the first color indicating that an associated portion should remain uncompressed and the second color indicating that an associated portion should be compressed;
• transmit the encoded data blob to a storage virtualization layer associated with the storage system;
• detect, by the storage virtualization layer, the first color of the first portion and the second color of the second portion;
• store, on the storage system, the first portion in an uncompressed format;
• compress, by the storage virtualization layer, the second portion;
• and
• store, on the storage system, the second portion in a compressed format.