In a simple, higher level way, a Thin LUN is a LUN you can present to a host as if it has more space available than is allocated to it initially. The example that makes sense to me is organized around a user storage environment.
If you have 1,000 users who all demand 100 GB of space available to them, you can make 1,000 Thin LUNs rather than 1,0000 "traditional" LUNs. Instead of taking up 100 TBs like the traditional LUNs would have to, your Thin LUNs can be created from a Thin Pool of whatever size you like (say just 1 TB instead). You are taking a little bit of a gamble, but if you are sure that a majority of the space you are allocating will not be utilized, then you are being quite efficient.
I hope that makes some sense out of it. Glens' post will answer your question in all the specifics you could want to know.
brendm
313 Posts
0
May 7th, 2009 11:00
If you have 1,000 users who all demand 100 GB of space available to them, you can make 1,000 Thin LUNs rather than 1,0000 "traditional" LUNs. Instead of taking up 100 TBs like the traditional LUNs would have to, your Thin LUNs can be created from a Thin Pool of whatever size you like (say just 1 TB instead). You are taking a little bit of a gamble, but if you are sure that a majority of the space you are allocating will not be utilized, then you are being quite efficient.
I hope that makes some sense out of it. Glens' post will answer your question in all the specifics you could want to know.
kelleg
4.5K Posts
1
May 5th, 2009 12:00
http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/H5512-emc-clariion-virtual-provisioning-wp.pdf
http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/h6069-leveraging-clariion-cx4-vp-for-database-deployments-wp.pdf
glen