1. A storage system comprising: a storage array comprising one or more storage resources; a processor communicatively coupled to the storage array; a de-duplication module comprising instructions embodied on a computer-readable medium communicatively coupled to the processor, the de-duplication module configured to, when read and executed by the processor: generate a fingerprint for an item of data stored on the storage array; identify a partition for the fingerprint; associate the partition with a hardware instance selected from a plurality of hardware instances, wherein each particular hardware instance comprises one or more information handling resources; and query the selected hardware instance to determine if the fingerprint exists on the hardware instance.