Capacity reduction in a storage system

1. A method for implementing capacity reduction in a storage system, the method comprising:

for each of a candidate page and a target page in the storage system, identifying a subset of sectors having identical data or a minimum specified amount of non-identical data;

performing a bit-wise exclusive OR (XOR) operation on sectors of the candidate page and the target page;

determining entropy from results of the XOR operation; and

upon determining the entropy is less than or equal to a threshold value, building a reference page from an XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation, wherein compression is performed on the reference page.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

upon determining the entropy is greater than a threshold value:

building the reference page from a corresponding sector of the candidate page; and

performing the compression on the reference page;

wherein the entropy indicates corresponding data between the candidate page and target page are different.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein determining the entropy from results of the XOR operation includes determining a number of non-zero bytes per sector from the results of the XOR operation;

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is less than or equal to the threshold value, building the reference page from the XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation; and

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is greater than the threshold value, building the reference page from the corresponding sector of the candidate page.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the candidate page and the target page are determined to be a partial match with respect to the identical or minimum amount of non-identical data.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the subset of sectors having identical data or the minimum specified amount of non-identical data includes retrieving identifiers of the sectors from a hash table and comparing hashed values of the sectors, wherein the data in the sectors are considered a match when the hashed values are the same.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the sectors includes performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the non-identical data.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the sectors includes performing the bit-wise XOR operation on all sectors having the minimum specified amount of non-identical data.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

attempting to read a user page; and

upon determining the user page is the XOR sector:

reading the user page and corresponding reference page;

decompressing the XOR sector and the reference page; and

returning results of the decompressing to a requestor.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:

upon determining the user page is not the XOR sector:

reading the user page;

decompressing the user page; and

returning results of the decompressing the user page to the requestor.

10. A system for implementing capacity reduction in a storage system environment, the system comprising:

a memory comprising computer-executable instructions; and

a processor executing the computer-executable instructions, the computer-executable instructions when executed by the processor cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

for each of a candidate page and a target page in the storage system, identifying a subset of sectors having identical data or a minimum specified amount of non-identical data;

performing a bit-wise exclusive OR (XOR) operation on sectors of the candidate page and the target page that are not in the subset;

determining entropy from results of the XOR operation; and

upon determining the entropy is less than or equal to a threshold value, building a reference page from an XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation, wherein compression is performed on the reference page.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the operations further comprise:

upon determining the entropy is greater than a threshold value:

building the reference page from a corresponding sector of the candidate page; and

performing the compression operation on the reference page;

wherein the entropy indicates corresponding data between the candidate page and target page are different.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein determining the entropy from results of the XOR operation includes determining a number of non-zero bytes per sector from the results of the XOR operation;

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is less than or equal to the threshold value, building the reference page from the XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation; and

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is greater than the threshold value, building the reference page from the corresponding sector of the candidate page.

13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the candidate page and the target page are determined to be a partial match with respect to the identical or minimum amount of non-identical data.

14. The system of claim 10 , wherein identifying the subset of sectors having identical data or the minimum specified amount of non-identical data includes retrieving identifiers of the sectors from a hash table and comparing hashed values of the sectors, wherein the data in the sectors are considered a match when the hashed values are the same.

15. The system of claim 10 , wherein performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the sectors includes performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the non-identical data.

16. The system of claim 10 , wherein performing the bit-wise XOR operation on the sectors includes performing the bit-wise XOR operation on all sectors having the minimum specified amount of non-identical data.

17. A computer program product for implementing capacity reduction in a storage system environment, the computer program product embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, and the computer program product including instructions that, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform operations. The operations include:

for each of a candidate page and a target page in the storage system, identifying a subset of sectors having identical data or a minimum specified amount of non-identical data;

performing a bit-wise exclusive OR (XOR) operation on sectors of the candidate page and the target page that are not in the subset;

determining entropy from results of the XOR operation;

upon determining the entropy is less than or equal to a threshold value, building a reference page from an XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation, wherein compression is performed on the reference page.

18. The computer program product of claim 17 , wherein the operations further comprise:

upon determining the entropy is greater than a threshold value:

building the reference page from a corresponding sector of the candidate page; and

performing the compression on the reference page;

wherein the entropy indicates corresponding data between the candidate page and target page are different.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 , wherein determining the entropy from results of the XOR operation includes determining a number of non-zero bytes per sector from the results of the XOR operation;

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is less than or equal to the threshold value, building the reference page from the XOR sector containing results of the bit-wise XOR operation; and

wherein upon determining the number of non-zero bytes is greater than the threshold value, building the reference page from the corresponding sector of the candidate page.

20. The computer program product of claim 17 wherein the candidate page and the target page are determined to be a partial match with respect to the identical or minimum amount of non-identical data.