Let’s make it simple.
Hi !!!
I believe everybody on the VMware world is aware of Thin Provisioning, right…. It has been out there for a long time as one of the new features of vSphere.
What ?!? You did not have time to check it out. I know the felling.
Thin Provisioning in VMware’s word is: “VMware thin provisioning enables virtual machines to utilize storage space on an as-needed basis, further increasing utilization of storage for virtual environments. vCenter Server 4.0 enables alerts and provides alarms and reports that specifically track allocation and current usage of storage capacity to allow administrators to optimize the allocation of storage for virtual environments. Thin provisioning allows users to safely optimize available storage space by using over-allocation and to reduce the storage costs for virtual environments”
It has been introduced (officially) with vSphere 4.0. You can check all new vSphere 4.0 features in here.
But, if you are a smart guy, you are planning to jump directly to vSphere 4.1, which has a couple of new features…see here.
Ok, now that you understand Thin Provisioning you may be wondering, is there any performance impact or benefit ?!?
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so check it out VMware’s performance study of Thin Provisioning. There’s a bunch of good information in there, concepts, performance rates, etc.
Wanna a resume ? Performance results between thin and thick disks are similar.
But remember it’s a controlled environment, make your own tests and measure them.
There’s no single solution that fit’s all.
