Virtual volume provisioning

A virtual volume can be provisioned as full or thin.

Full. A fully provisioned virtual volume is one in which the space that is allocated at creation time is the full capacity (size) of the virtual volume.

For example, when a fully provisioned virtual volume is created with a 10 GiB virtual capacity, the storage system allocates the full 10 GiB of space.

Thin. A thinly provisioned virtual volume is one in which a minimal amount of the space is allocated at creation time. After the virtual volume is exported to a host, the virtual volume size grows automatically with the host writes, up to the user-defined size limit.

For example, when a thinly provisioned virtual volume is created with a 10 GiB virtual capacity, the storage system initially allocates only 0.625 GiB (0.5 GiB user space and 0.125 GiB admin space). After the virtual volume is exported to a host, and the data grows with host writes, the storage system automatically increases the virtual capacity, up to the 10 GiB limit. There are automatic and user-defined alerts to help manage the virtual capacity.

Creation of thinly provisioned virtual volumes on a storage system requires an HPE 3PAR Thin Provisioning software license.

Dedup. A thinly deduplicated virtual volume is a thinly provisioned virtual volume that uses in-line deduplication. In-line deduplication eliminates duplicate writes to help extend the life of SSD physical drives.

Learn more: Virtual volumes overview.