Flash-Based Storage Deduplication Techniques: A Survey

Exponential growth of the amount of data stored worldwide together with high level of data redundancy motivates the active development of data deduplication techniques. The overall increasing popularity of solid-state drives (SSDs) as primary storage devices forces the adaptation of deduplication techniques to technical peculiarities of this type of storage (such as write amplification and wearout), implying active research in SSD-equipped storage data deduplication subdomain. In this survey paper the authors summarize the recent results on deduplication in SSD-enhanced storage, providing a novel taxonomy of the techniques. They classify the techniques on the basis of storage device complexity, starting from a sub-device level up to the storage network. Linux deduplication implementations are discussed, and the results of experimental comparison of several widely used tools are presented. Finally, the authors briefly outline open problems in the field and possible points of future research.