Patent ID: 8484356

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving a request for allocating a storage unit of a storage system to back up data of one or more clients, the storage system having a plurality of storage units, each storage unit storing data that is deduplicated within each storage unit; in response to the request, selecting one or more of the plurality of storage units based on an amount of deduplicated data that would be stored in each of the storage units after storing the data of the one or more clients, including comparing fingerprints of the data of the one or more clients with fingerprints of at least a portion of data stored in each of the storage units, and identifying a first of the storage units as a selection candidate that contains a significant fraction of fingerprints of one or more of the one or more clients from the storage units based on the comparison; and allocating the selected one or more storage units to the one or more clients to back up the data of the one or more clients.