A plurality of workers is configured for parallel processing of deduplicated data entities in a plurality of chunks. The deduplicated data processing rate is regulated using a rate control mechanism. The rate control mechanism incorporates a debt/credit algorithm specifying which of the plurality of workers processing the deduplicated data entities must wait for each of a plurality of calculated required sleep times. The rate control mechanism is adapted to limit a data flow rate based on a penalty acquired during a last processing of one of the plurality of chunks in a retroactive manner, and further adapted to operate on at least one vector representation of at least one limit specification to accommodate a variety of available dimensions corresponding to the at least one limit specification.