Data compression is performed on a storage system for which one or more host systems have direct access to data on the storage system. The storage system may compress the data for one or more logical storage units (LSUs) having data stored thereon, and may update compression metadata associated with the LSUs and/or the data portions thereof to reflect that the data is compressed. In response to a read request for a data portion received from a host application executing on the host system, compression metadata for the data portion may be accessed. If it is determined from the compression metadata that the data portion is compressed, the data compression metadata for the data portion may be further analyzed to determine how to decompress the data portion. The data portion may be retrieved and decompressed, and the decompressed data may be returned to the requesting application.