Configuration
The physical storage used by the thin devices comes from jointly used thin pools to which the thin devices are assigned dynamically. A thin pool, in turn, consists of the so-called data devices. Data devices are configured as special, internal volumes of the storage system which cannot be addressed from the outside. They are dynamically assigned to a thin pool and activated for use.
A detailed description is provided in the EMC documentation.
All the actions needed to configure virtual provisioning must be executed by an external management instance. From the server’s point of view a thin device is no different from a conventional volume; it appears with the preconfigured capacity which is theoretically usable.
Dynamic extension
The virtual provisioning resources can be extended dynamically by the external management instance without interrupting the application. New thin devices can be configured and assigned to the thin pools. The RAID level of the thin device is specified by the thin pool.
Monitoring
Storage consumption by thin devices and thin pools is monitored using SHC-OSD. Monitoring by SHC-OSD can be set, see the THIN-POOL-MONITORING parameter in the SHC-OSD parameter file in the section "Configuration of SHC-OSD". The currently used capacity of the thin devices is monitored in relation to the configured capacity and that displayed by the server. Parallel to this, the occupancy of the jointly used thin pools is also monitored.