Nimbus Data dedupe patent

Nimbus Data has been granted a patent covering deduplication.

The patent number 8,751,763, is entitled “Low-overhead Deduplication within Block-based Data Storage”. The abstract states:

A write-data hash value corresponding to a block of write data is generated within a deduplicating data storage system. A block of lookup table entries is retrieved from a location in a lookup table stored within a block-based storage medium, the lookup table location being indicated by a first portion of the write-data hash value and each lookup table entry including a pointer to a respective stored data volume, a portion of a hash value that corresponds to the stored data volume, and a reference count indicating a quantity of references to the stored data volume. A second portion of the write-data hash value is compared to the portions of the hash values within the block of lookup table entries, and the reference count is incremented within one of the lookup table entries for which the portion of the hash value is determined to match the second portion of the write-data hash value.

Nimbus recently announced its ExaFlash all-flash array with deduplication. ®