One aspect of the present invention includes enabling data chunks to be shared among different storage pools within a storage management system, according the use of deduplication and storage information kept at the system level, and applied with policy-based rules that define the scope of deduplication. In one embodiment, the parameters of performing deduplication are defined within the policy, particularly which of the plurality of storage pools allow deduplication to which other pools. Accordingly, a data object may be linked to deduplicated data chunks existent within other storage pools, and the transfer of a data object may occur by simply creating references to existing data chunks in other pools provided the policy allows the pool to reference chunks in these other pools. Additionally, a group of storage pools may be defined within the policy to perform a common set of deduplication activities across all pools within the group.