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Dell PowerVault ME4 Series Storage System Administrator’s Guide

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About thin provisioning

Thin provisioning is a virtual storage feature that allows a system administrator to overcommit physical storage resources. This allows the host system to operate as though it has more storage available than is actually allocated to it. When physical resources fill up, the administrator can add physical storage by adding additional disk groups on demand.

Paging is required to eliminate the lack of flexibility associated with linear mapping. Linear mapping limits the ability to easily expand the physical storage behind the thin-provisioned volume. Paged mapping allows physical resources to be disparate and noncontiguous, making it much easier to add storage on the fly.

For example, contrast the methods for creating a volume for Microsoft Exchange Server data:
  • Typically, administrators create a storage-side volume for Exchange and map that volume with an assigned Logical Unit Number (LUN) to hosts, and then create a Microsoft Windows volume for that LUN. Each volume has a fixed size. There are ways to increase the size of a storage-side volume and its associated Windows volume, but they are often cumbersome. The administrator must make a trade-off between initial disk costs and a volume size that provides capacity for future growth.
  • With thin provisioning, the administrator can create a very large volume, up to the maximum size allowed by Windows. The administrator can begin with only a small number of disks, and add more as physical storage needs grow. The process of expanding the Windows volume is eliminated.
NOTE:For a thin-provisioned volume mapped to a host, when data is deleted from the volume not all of the pages, or space associated with that data will be deallocated, or released. This is especially true for smaller files. To deallocate the pages in Windows, select the mapped volume and do either of the following:
  • Perform a quick format.
  • View its properties, select the Tools tab, and under Defragmentation, click Optimize.

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