A method, computer system, and computer program product for determining whether data compression should be performed at a storage virtualization layer or a backend layer, within a storage area network, including assessing a volume of data to decide whether the volume of data should be compressed or is already compressed, and in response to deciding that the volume of data should be compressed: checking whether a restriction exists on the volume of data, and in response to deciding that the volume of data is already compressed: determining that the volume of data already compressed should be uncompressed based on at least one metric.