Deduplication replication in a distributed deduplication data storage system

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided herein for automatically configuring newly installed secondary storage computing devices and managing secondary storage computing devices when one or more become unavailable. For example, a storage manager can then detect the computing resources available to the newly installed secondary storage computing device, assign a role to the newly installed secondary storage computing device based on the detected computing resources, configure the newly installed secondary storage computing device with deduplication and storage policies used by the other secondary storage computing devices, re-partition secondary storage devices to allocate memory for the newly installed secondary storage computing device, and instruct other secondary storage computing devices to replicate their managed data such that the newly installed secondary storage computing device has access to the replicated data.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A networked information management system configured to automatically configure installed data storage computers, the networked information management system comprising:
 a first data storage computer comprising computer hardware, wherein the first data storage computer is configured to manage first deduplication information stored in a first deduplication database, wherein the first data storage computer is configured to process input/output (I/O) requests corresponding to first data, wherein the first data is stored in a first partition of a secondary storage device, wherein a replication of second data is stored in a second partition of the secondary storage device, and wherein the first data storage computer is further configured to access the first data stored in the first partition and the replication of the second data stored in the second partition;   a second data storage computer comprising computer hardware, wherein the second data storage computer is configured to process I/O requests corresponding to the second data, wherein a replication of the first data is stored in a third partition of the secondary storage device, wherein the second data is stored in a fourth partition of the secondary storage device, and wherein the second data storage computer is further configured to access the replication of the first data stored in the third partition and the second data stored in the fourth partition; and   a storage manager comprising computer hardware configured to:
 detect that the second data storage computer is installed in the networked information management system, 
 instruct the first data storage computer to replicate the first deduplication information and transmit the replicated first deduplication information to the second data storage computer for storage in a second deduplication database, 
 detect that the first data storage computer has failed, 
 receive a first I/O request corresponding to the first data, and 
 send the first I/O request to the second data storage computer in place of the first data storage computer in response to detecting that the first data storage computer has failed, wherein the second data storage computer is configured to process the first I/O request using at least one of the replication of the first data stored in the third partition or the replicated first deduplication information stored in the second deduplication database.