Patent ID: 8626723

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more processors; a de-duplicated repository of a storage management system, coupled to the one or more processors; and a de-duplication logic of the storage management system, coupled to the one or more processors and to the de-duplicated repository, wherein the de-duplicated logic is operable to store files in the de-duplicated repository using a single storage encoding and to: receive, from a client device over a network, a first request to store a file in the de-duplicated repository, wherein the first request includes an identifier of the file and a set of signatures that respectively identify a set of chunks from the file, wherein the client device is remote from the storage management system; look up the set of signatures in the de-duplicated repository to determine whether any chunks in the set of chunks are not stored in the de-duplicated repository; request, from the client device, those chunks from the set of chunks that are not stored in the de-duplicated repository; for each chunk from the set of chunks that is not stored in the de-duplicated repository, store in the de-duplicated repository using the single storage encoding at least the chunk and a signature, from the set of signatures, that represents the chunk; and store, in the de-duplicated repository, a file entry that represents the file and that associates the set of signatures with the identifier of the file, wherein the de-duplicated repository is stored on physical disk blocks that have a fixed size, and wherein the set of chunks are generated using a fingerprinting logic that is configured to generate variable-sized chunks in a manner that is dependent on the fixed size, such that each variable-sized chunk is no larger than the fixed size.