Patent ID: 8209506

Claim:
A method for de-duplicating redundant data in a virtualized storage environment, the method comprising: pooling storage capacity from a plurality of storage devices into a single storage pool by applying an abstraction layer to the plurality of storage devices, the abstraction layer presenting a representation of a corresponding portion of the pooled storage capacity to each of one or more host systems; operating the one or more host systems in a computer architecture that includes the plurality of storage devices, each host system configured to write data to and read data from a corresponding portion of the pooled storage capacity; and operating a data de-duplication application on a host system included in the one or more host systems in the computer architecture to globally de-duplicate data in the pooled storage capacity, wherein the abstraction layer presents a representation at least a portion of the pooled storage capacity to the data de-duplication application and wherein the data de-duplication application performs de-duplication in the portion of the pooled storage capacity.