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Thank you - One follow up - What is the benefit of making the OS see 200 GB as 750 GB?
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Thank you - One follow up - What is the benefit of making the OS see 200 GB as 750 GB?

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Excellent!! &nbsp;Thank you very much!
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I guess you worked out the benefit of letting the OS see more space than there is, it saves having to grow the filesystem after you add more storage. You do have to be careful of filling up the filesystem and then emptying it though because most thin provisioning doesn't realise that space is now free since only the master file table entries are deleted, and be careful of defragmenting as that can have a similar effect.
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I guess you worked out the benefit of letting the OS see more space than there is, it saves having to grow the filesystem after you add more storage. You do have to be careful of filling up the filesystem and then emptying it though because most thin provisioning doesn't realise that space is now free since only the master file table entries are deleted, and be careful of defragmenting as that can have a similar effect.

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How does (or does) thin provisioning affect the number of physical disks needed to create a single volume with parity redundancy when creating a storage pool? &nbsp;For example, if I need to create a volume with 750 GB of usable space using 200 GB drives, would I still need to use 5 &nbsp;physical drives or would the thin provisioning allow me to use fewer? &nbsp;Thank you
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How does (or does) thin provisioning affect the number of physical disks needed to create a single volume with parity redundancy when creating a storage pool?  For example, if I need to create a volume with 750 GB of usable space using 200 GB drives, would I still need to use 5  physical drives or would the thin provisioning allow me to use fewer?  Thank you

Thin provisioning when setting up a storage pool

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.

Storage Hardware

Servers are computing devices that are similar to desktop computers in that they have the same basic components, but are significantly different in size, configuration and purpose. Servers are usually accessed over a network, and many run unattended, without a computer monitor, input device, audio hardware or USB interfaces. Many servers do not have a graphical user interface (GUI), and are configured and managed remotely. Servers typically include hardware redundancy such as dual power supplies, RAID disk systems, and ECC memory, along with extensive pre-boot memory testing and verification. Critical components might be hot swappable, and to guard against overheating, servers might have more powerful fans or use water cooling.

Server Hardware

The term "Backup" means the methods and processes involved to copy computer data (system data as well as application data) to media other than the ones where the data originally live (disk, tape, optical, cloud). "Restore" in turn means the methods and processes involved in data recovery, i. e., bringing back copied computer data to their original location. Backup/Restore primarily serves as a means of protection against data loss, be it due to disaster, corruption or sabotage. It can also be used for recovering data from an earlier point in time and even for cloning machines or applications. There is a wide variety of backup/restore software available, from expensive commercial products to free or open source tools.