This post will explore the topic of thin provision vs. thick. We will introduce what thin and thick provisions are and explain the difference between them.
Thin provisioning and thick provisioning are available storage pre-allocation schemes when creating VMware virtual machines. Although they can allocate the storage of virtual disks, they are fundamentally different.
Thin provision is the fastest way to pre-allocate storage. At first, it will only allocate the necessary storage for the VM and then use the available dynamic space to meet the growing storage needs continuously.
The following are its characteristics:
Thick Provision is another storage pre-allocation scheme that is as important as thin provision. Unlike the dynamic storage method adopted by the thin provision, the thick provision will pre-allocate fixed physical storage to the VM when creating virtual disks. These virtual disks will consume all the space allocated to them from the beginning so that other virtual machines cannot use this space.
This also means that if you create a 50GB virtual disk using the thick Provision, it will actually consume 50GB of physical disk space. Even if no data is written to the disk later, this physical storage cannot be occupied by other data.
Thick Lazy Zeroed:
Thick Eager Zeroed:
Thin provision and thick provision are very different in 4 aspects: Storage changes, creation time, first write speed, and over-provisioning.
Comparison | Thin Provision | Thick Lazy Zeroed | Thick Eager Zeroed |
---|---|---|---|
Storage Changes | Yes | No | No |
Creation Time | Shortest | Short | Longest |
First Write | Slowest | Fast | Fastest |
Over-Provisioning | Yes | No | No |
Each storage pre-allocation scheme has its advantages and disadvantages at the same time. Thin Provision is the most space-saving choice when creating virtual disks, and the creation time is very short too. But it requires a high level of monitoring to ensure data security. Thick Eagle Zeroed has good performance and is relatively safe, but it requires high storage space and takes a long time to create. The creation time of Thick Lazy Zeroed is short, but the writing speed and security are not as good as that of Thick Eagle Zeroed.
To sum up, when you choose the storage pre-allocation scheme, please refer to the actual situation and make a satisfactory choice.
Related Articles
How to Fix High Memory Usage in Windows 11
Windows 11 Is Not Activated: How to Activate Windows 11 OS for Free
CMR vs. SMR Hard Drive: Which One is Better to be Choosen?
What Is Clipboard and How to Copy and Paste? [Full Guide]