What Is Thin Provisioning?

Thin provisioning (TP) is a storage pre-allocation strategy for optimizing the efficiency with which a system utilizes space. TP uses virtualization to allocate disk space among users based on how much space each user needs at any given time. A thin-provisioned disk consumes only the storage it needs initially and grows over time according to the user demand. Other common names for TP are virtual provisioning or thin storage.