Thin Provisioning
Increase storage utilization, simplify capacity planning and management tasks

Overview:

Thin provisioning technology allows users to allocate a large amount of virtual capacity for an application server regardless of the physical capacity actually available. Actual space is used only when data writes occur. By automatically allocating system capacity to applications as needed, thin provisioning technology can significantly increase storage utilization. Thin provisioning also greatly simplifies capacity planning and management tasks.

Thin provisioning enables you to purchase only the disk capacity you actually need. This means no more up-front capacity allocation, no more dedicating resources for each application, and no more paying for power and cooling of disks you may not need for months or years to come.

Benefits:

Features	Benefits
Increased storage utilization	"Just-in-time" capacity allocations helps Increase storage utilization up to 80%-90%
Reduced costs	With increased storage utilization, users can add disk space as needed and delay storage purchases to leverage disk drive price declines
Simplified management	Simplifies capacity planning and volume utilization tracking; after initial provisioning, volumes will automatically grow to accommodate new writes and IT managers only need to ensure there is enough free space in the storage pool
Increased availability	Eliminates capacity expansion downtime; both data volumes and storage can be expanded without disrupting business production

Diagram:

Infortrend's thin provisioning offers large increase in storage utilization compared to traditional provisioning