Virtual Provisioning

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Virtual Provisioning Mean?

Virtual provisioning is a virtual storage network (VSAN)-based technology in which storage space is allocated on demand to devices. This process allows virtualized environments to control the allocation and management of physical disk storage connected with virtual machines (VM).

Advertisements

Virtual provisioning is also known as thin provisioning. However, virtual provisioning is more relevant to a virtual environment, while thin provisioning is more relevant to physical computing implementations.

Techopedia Explains Virtual Provisioning

Virtual provisioning presents but does not actually assign higher storage capacity to VMs. The underlying host allocates physical storage to each VM, based on actual requirements and as needed.

For example, a collective VSAN pool may contain 30 GB. A connected VM device may be presented with a logical space of 10 GB, but in actuality, the space may be smaller. Therefore, when the VM requests storage space, storage capacity up to 5 GB or more, if required and available, is allocated.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.