Starting from Data ONTAP 7.3.1, deduplication is fully supported with vFiler units. Deduplication commands are also available in all vFiler contexts. Deduplication support on vFiler units allows users to reduce redundant data blocks within vFiler units.
Deduplication is a volume-level operation. The deduplication feature is supported only for FlexVol volumes. You can enable deduplication on FlexVol volumes in a vFiler unit. Deduplication support on vFiler units ensures that storage owned by one vFiler unit will not be accessable to the other vFiler unit. This integration ensures that vFiler disaster recovery and vFiler migrate support deduplication. If deduplication is enabled on the volume in the source vFiler unit, then all deduplication attributes propogate to the destination vFiler unit.
vFiler disaster recovery: All FlexVol volumes at the destination vFiler unit inherit deduplication attributes of the source vFiler unit.
vFiler migrate: Deduplication attributes of FlexVol volumes on the source vFiler unit will migrate to the destination vFiler unit.
Deduplication must be licensed on the primary storage system. It is recommended that you license deduplication on the secondary storage system also. These licenses ensure that deduplication operations can continue without any disruption in case of a failure in which the secondary vFiler unit becomes the primary storage system.