HP XP20000XP24000 Disk Array - Manual (Page 11)

1 Overview of HP StorageWorks
XP Thin Provisioning Software
XP Thin Provisioning is a program product that enables you to reduce the installation cost and the cost of
volume management. In XP Thin Provisioning, the V-VOL (virtual volume) is used to reduce the installation
cost and the cost of management.
XP Thin Provisioning Features
XP Thin Provisioning allows customers to allocate virtual disk storage based on their anticipated future
needs, but with fewer physical disks initially required. Additional physical disks can be purchased later
and installed transparently without an application service interruption.
The primary benefits of XP Thin Provisioning are:
• Elimination of application service interruptions that are normally required to install new disk
capacity. Because the application only sees the amount of virtual capacity that is allocated to it,
additional physical disk capacity can be installed when needed without interruption.
• Reduced TCO by deferring some portion of storage acquisitions to a later date. Over an extended
period of time, the storage acquisition costs will be reduced by the use of XP Thin Provisioning.
• Potentially enhanced performance because the virtual capacity is provisioned from a global pool
of LDEVs and, therefore, the data and the I/O activity may be spread across a wider number
of disks, resulting in potentially higher performance. You can level the workload without being
constrained by the physical disk structure.
• Simplified administration by reducing the impact of volume creation and volume formatting
associated with the installation of physical disk capacity. An XP Thin Provisioning volume will
be displayed as a Virtual LVI/LUN volume that has no actual storage capacity. Actual storage
capacity from the XP Thin Provisioning pool is assigned when the data is written.
• Potentially reduced power and cooling requirements due to fewer physical disks required.
The following figure illustrates the difference between purchases made before and after installing
XP Thin Provisioning.
XP24000 Thin Provisioning Software User's Guide 11