I *know* this is wrong
<quote>
The company's marketing VP, Larry Cormier, ... contrasts NetApp and LeftHand cloning approaches: "NetApp's FlexClone is file-based. Ours is block-based. The (VDI) data looks more like a database than a file."
</quote>
I beg to differ. NetApp's deduplication is block based, not file based. FlexClone is a block based zero capacity technology. It doesn't deduplicate data because it doesn't duplicate it in the first place.
Disclosure; NetApp employee