Thin provisioning allows users to allocate a large amount of for an application, regardless of the physical capacity actually available. At initial setup, thin provisioning does not physically allocate capacity to the prescribed data volume, and the actual space is used only when data writes occur.

This on-demand method for capacity allocation not only optimizes storage utilization, but also greatly simplifies capacity planning and management. In order to help users easily monitor capacity utilization, storage systems automatically issue notifications when the total capacity utilization is reaching the threshold set by the user. If users wish to expand capacity, they can do so non-disruptively.

With traditional provisioning, it is difficult to move data across logical partitions in a storage architecture. If thin provisioning is applied, storage capacity from different logical partitions can be consolidated, enabling it to be dynamically allocated. From the opposite perspective, this means that the storage controller can move data dynamically across logical partitions based on how resources are designed to function.

Furthermore, thin provisioning opens the door for other advances in storage design, including . Storage tiering involves grouping data into different categories and assigning these categories to different types of storage media in order to optimize storage utilization.

Automated tiering ensures applications have access to the performance levels they need. High-performance applications can be assigned to high-performance tiers featuring drives such as SSDs or SAS, while applications requiring less performance can be assigned to lower tiers featuring low-performance drives such as SATA.