Deduplicating extents across systems based upon indications of shared extents provided by clients

A non-transitory machine readable medium comprising instructions for performing a method, which when executed by a machine, causes the machine to:

• execute a create file operation, received from a client device that maintains a first local file and a second local file, to create a first remote file within a storage system to correspond to the first local file;
• write a first extent, received from the client device, into the first remote file based upon the first local file comprising the first extent and the second local file lacking the first extent;
• receive a copy operation from the client device for a second extent of the first local file;
• evaluate the copy operation to identify an indicator, included within the copy operation by the client in place of data associated with the second extent, that the first local file and the second local file share the second extent, wherein the storage system maintains a second remote file corresponding to the second local file, and wherein the indicator comprises a field specifying that the storage system is to share the second extent and triggers a conversion of the copy operation into a sharing operation bar modifying a command within the copy operation;
• and
• perform the sharing operation to share the second extent of the second remote file with the first remote file and prevent the storage system from allocating space for the second extent within the first remote file, resulting in a single instance of the data of the second extent being stored and shared by the first and second remote files.

A computing device comprising:

• a memory comprising machine executable code for performing a method;
• and
• a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the machine executable code to cause the processor to:
• execute a create file operation, received from a client device that maintains a first local file and a second local file, to create a first remote file within a storage system to correspond to the first local file;
• write a first extent, received from the client device, into the first remote file based upon the first local file comprising the first extent and the second local file lacking the first extent;
• receive a copy operation from the client device for a second extent of the first local file;
• evaluate the copy operation to identify an indicator, included within the copy operation by the client in place of data associated with the second extent, that the first local file and the second local file share the second extent, wherein the storage system maintains a second remote file corresponding to the second local file, and wherein the indicator comprises a field specifying that the storage system is to share the second extent and triggers a conversion of the copy operation into a sharing operation by modifying a command within the copy operation;
• and
• perform the sharing operation to share the second extent of the second remote file with the first remote file and prevent the storage system from allocating space for the second extent within the first remote file, resulting in a single instance of the data of the second extent being stored and shared by the first and second remote files.