Preserving redundancy in data deduplication systems by encryption

A method for preserving data redundancy in a data deduplication system for adhering to requirements of an application for allocating a plurality of copies of a selected data segment to a plurality of physical storage locations in a computing environment by a processor, comprising:

• in a two-way mirrored storage pool, determining and identifying the plurality of copies of the selected data segment that are to be precluded from data deduplication, the selected data segment comprising a superblock associated with a segment of metadata describing characteristics of a file system;
• before a write of the selected data segment is issued, encrypting with a unique encryption key, by the application, the selected data segment to be written through the data deduplication system such that the selected data segment is not subject to a deduplication operation, wherein the unique encryption key is a weak and predictable encryption key and does not require additional metadata storage space of the selected data segment;
• tricking the data deduplication system to recognize the encrypted, selected data segment as new, undeduplicated data by the encrypting thereby skipping steps of the deduplication operation that includes fingerprint generation and matching, wherein the encrypted, selected data segment is not matched with identical data previously written;
• and
• directly writing the encrypted, selected data segment to a new physical storage location even if there are earlier instances of identical data of the encrypted, selected data segment being stored on a storage controller such that multiple, redundant copies of the selected data segment comprising the superblock are stored in the plurality of physical storage locations in the computing environment;
• wherein encrypting the selected data segment includes choosing multiple selected data segments written as a unit such that each of the multiple selected data segments are decrypted as the unit.