Avoiding encryption of certain blocks in a deduplication vault

1. A method for avoiding encryption of certain blocks during a backup of a source storage into a deduplication vault storage, the method comprising:

seeding the deduplication vault storage with common plain text blocks, the seeding the deduplication vault storage including:

identifying an encrypted block stored in the deduplication vault storage that corresponds to multiple source storages;

designating the encrypted block as a common block;

obtaining a plain text block that corresponds to the encrypted block;

replacing the encrypted block with the corresponding plain text block in the deduplication vault storage; and

storing a hash value of the corresponding plain text block in a database or hash table such that the hash value is associated with the corresponding plain text block; and

for each allocated plain text block in the source storage at a point in time, performing the following steps:

analyzing the allocated plain text block to determine if the allocated plain text block is already stored in the deduplication vault storage;

if the allocated plain text block is not stored in the deduplication vault storage, encrypting the allocated plain text block and analyzing the encrypted block to determine if the encrypted block is already stored in the deduplication vault storage; and

if neither the allocated plain text block nor the encrypted block is already stored in the deduplication vault storage, storing the encrypted block in the deduplication vault storage.

2. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the common plain text blocks include blocks that make up files of a standard operating system and/or files of a standard software application and/or blocks that have been designated by an administrator or user of the deduplication vault storage as common blocks.

3. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the analyzing the allocated plain text block includes compressing the allocated plain text block.

4. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the analyzing the allocated plain text block includes:

hashing the allocated plain text block to produce a hash value;

determining if the hash value matches a hash value of any plain text block already stored in the deduplication vault storage; and

if the hash value matches any hash value of any plain text block already stored in the deduplication vault storage, determining that the allocated plain text block is already stored in the deduplication vault storage.

5. The method as recited in claim 4 , wherein hash values associated with plain text blocks stored in the deduplication vault storage are stored in the database or the hash table.

6. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the analyzing the encrypted block includes:

hashing the encrypted block to produce a hash value;

determining if the hash value matches a hash value of any encrypted block already stored in the deduplication vault storage; and

if the hash value matches the hash value of any encrypted block already stored in the deduplication vault storage, determining that the encrypted block is already stored in the deduplication vault storage.

7. The method as recited in claim 6 , wherein the storing the encrypted block in the deduplication vault storage further includes storing the hash value in the database or the hash table such that the hash value is associated with the encrypted block.

8. The method as recited in claim 7 , wherein the encrypting the allocated plain text block includes encrypting the allocated plain text block using a user-chosen key.

9. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing one or more programs that, when executed, causes one or more processors to perform the method as recited in claim 1 .

10. The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising reading, from the deduplication vault storage, and storing, in a restore storage, each allocated block that was stored in the source storage at the point in time in the same position as stored in the source storage at the point in time, wherein each encrypted allocated block is decrypted prior to being stored in the restore storage and each plain text allocated block is not decrypted prior to being stored in the restore storage.

11. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the seeding the deduplication vault storage with common plain text blocks is performed prior to the point in time.