A data storage system implements aggregation, bifurcation, and/or reduction techniques to improve the efficiency of processing data storage requests. Data storage requests and/or their associated payloads may be aggregated based on one or more parameters. Data to be the stored and the associated commands may be separated so as to optimize a system's throughput and latency for each. Furthermore, extraneous commands and requests may be reduced or eliminated based on heuristics associated with the requests and the data.