Product guide

Virtual Provisioning overview 259
About Virtual Provisioning
Figure 235 Thin device relationship to storage pool devices
Benefits of Virtual Provisioning and the role of Ionix ControlCenter
Virtual Provisioning creates new benefits and new challenges for storage
management. When managed properly, Virtual Provisioning can provide dynamic
changes in how capacity utilization is managed and provisioned.
Before Virtual Provisioning, metavolumes were used to stripe data over many physical
disks. Virtually provisioned devices are automatically wide striped over many disks.
Wide striping can improve performance for some application workloads. In addition,
virtually provisioned devices can be oversubscribed, creating new dynamics for host
storage provisioning. Administrators can allocate a volume size to a host in excess of
the actual storage provided to the virtually provisioned environment. Virtual
Provisioning provides storage administrators with more flexibility to be generous with
advertised storage, while still maintaining high utilization rates.