Why deduplicate data?
Eliminating redundant data can significantly shrink storage requirements and improve bandwidth efficiency. Because primary storage has gotten cheaper over time, enterprises typically store many versions of the same information so that new work can re-use old work. Some operations like Backup store extremely redundant information. Deduplication lowers storage costs since fewer disks are needed, and shortens backup/recovery times since there can be far less data to transfer. In the context of backup and other nearline data, we can make a strong supposition that there is a great deal of duplicate data. The same data keeps getting stored over and over again consuming a lot of unnecessary storage space (disk or tape), electricity (to power and cool the disk or tape drives), and bandwidth (for replication), creating a chain of cost and resource inefficiencies within the organization.
