Patent ID: 8886613

Claim:
A method for controlling a data de-duplication apparatus, comprising: upon determining that a chunk of data to be de-duplicated by the data de-duplication apparatus is associated with a replication indicator located in the chunk of data, controlling the data de-duplication apparatus to schedule the chunk of data for de-duplication in a de-duplication schedule location ahead of chunks of data not associated with a replication indicator, where the schedule location is based, at least in part, on the replication indicator; and upon determining that the chunk of data to be de-duplicated is not associated with a replication indicator located in the chunk of data, controlling the data de-duplication apparatus to schedule the chunk of data for de-duplication in a de-duplication schedule location behind chunks of data having associated replication indicators, where the chunk of data is a portion of a piece of ingested data, where the replication indicator controls whether the chunk of data is to be replicated, and where the replication indicator controls the order in which chunks are deduplicated so that chunks that are going to be replicated are deduplicated before chunks that are not going to be replicated.