SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR STORING REDUNDANT INFORMATION
First Claim
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1. A method in a computer system for reducing redundant storage of data, the method comprising:
- identifying a first copy of data stored on a storage server, wherein the first copy is created at least in part by performing a storage operation on data objects stored on one or more client computers;
processing the first copy of data to identify one or more duplicate data objects stored within the first copy;
creating a new copy of the data that does not contain the duplicate data objects by storing a first instance of each data object within the new copy and replacing additional instances of the data object within the new copy with information for locating the first instance.
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Abstract
A method and system for reducing storage requirements and speeding up storage operations by reducing the storage of redundant data includes receiving a request that identifies one or more data objects to which to apply a storage operation. For each data object, the storage system determines if the data object contains data that matches another data object to which the storage operation was previously applied. If the data objects do not match, then the storage system performs the storage operation in a usual manner. However, if the data objects do match, then the storage system may avoid performing the storage operation.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method in a computer system for reducing redundant storage of data, the method comprising:
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identifying a first copy of data stored on a storage server, wherein the first copy is created at least in part by performing a storage operation on data objects stored on one or more client computers; processing the first copy of data to identify one or more duplicate data objects stored within the first copy; creating a new copy of the data that does not contain the duplicate data objects by storing a first instance of each data object within the new copy and replacing additional instances of the data object within the new copy with information for locating the first instance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. A system for reducing redundant copies of files in a storage environment, the system comprising:
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a storage manager component configured to create at least a first copy of data by duplicating primary data stored on at least one computer system; a single instance database component configured to identify files stored by the system and maintain an index for determining if two data objects contain the same data; and a single instancing component configured to create a second copy of data from the first copy of data, wherein the first copy of data contains more than one instance of at least one data object and the second copy contains only one instance of each data object. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a computer system to reduce redundant data, by a method comprising:
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receiving a list of files contained in a first copy of data, wherein the list contains information associated with each file indicating if other instances of the file are stored within the system; comparing the list of files and the information received with an index of files stored by the system; creating a second copy of the data; for each file in the list of files for which the index identifies a matching file stored by the system, storing a reference to the matching file in the second copy; and for each file in the list of files for which the index does not identify a matching file stored by the system, storing the file in the second copy. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification