Patent ID: 8548953

Claim:
A method of deduplicating files, the method comprising: accessing, with a file virtualization device, a virtualized environment including one or more primary storage servers operating as a primary storage tier and storing a first plurality of files and one or more secondary storage servers operating as a secondary storage tier and storing a second plurality of files comprising at least a plurality of files not included in the first plurality of files, wherein a global namespace is associated with the first and second pluralities of files stored in the one or more primary and secondary storage servers; identifying, with the file virtualization device, a subset of the first plurality of files that are stored in the primary storage tier and have identical file contents and storing a copy of only the subset of files in the secondary storage tier; storing, with the file virtualization device, a single copy of the contents of each of the subset of files in the primary storage tier and deleting all other files having identical file contents from the primary storage tier; and storing, with the file virtualization device, metadata associating each of the copies of the subset of files stored in the secondary storage tier with a corresponding one of the single copies stored in the primary storage tier.