Data Deduplication explained
Data Deduplication Data deduplication is a technique for reducing the amount of storage space an organization needs to save its data. In most organizations, the storage systems contain duplicate copies of many pieces of data. For example, the same file may be saved in several different places by different users, or two or more files that aren't identical may still include much of the same data. Deduplication eliminates these extra copies by saving just one copy of the data and replacing the other copies with pointers that lead back to the original copy. Companies frequently use deduplication in backup and disaster recovery applications, but it can be used to free up space in primary storage as well. In its simplest form, deduplication takes place on the file level; that is, it eliminates duplicate copies of the same file. This kind of deduplication is sometimes called file-level deduplication or single instance storage (SIS). Deduplication can also take place on the block level,...