Unfortunately, I could not find any definite answers in the marketing blurbs so I hope someone can answer me these questions here :)

All questions are meant for XenServer 5.6.

1) What license do I need to use thin provisioning?

2) Are there any differences between the minimum license level and the ones above with regards to thin provisioning?

3) Am I forced to use StorageLink enabled backends to leverage thin provisioning?

4) If 3) is answered with "no", can I use bare FC, iSCSI and DRBD with thin provisioning?

5) Are there any best practices and recommendations for thin provisioning?

Thanks a lot,
Richard

XenServer supports types of Storage Repositories

1. File system VHD based, local ext3 or remote NFS filesystems, which includes thin provisioning capabilities
2. Block based VHD format, LVM based, which has no support for Thin Provisioning (for 5.5/5.6).
3. LUN based raw format. A virtual disk is directly mapped to a storage LUN. If storage system supports thin provisioning, XenServer can automatically use and enable this.

For option 1 and 2 you can use any version of XenServer (or OSS Xen Cloud Platform). No licenses required.
No you cannot use any XenServer level thin provisioning with FC, iSCSI (block) type of SRs.
Well you can of course enable thin provisioning at the storage level (provided you storage system has thin provisioning) which will be applied to the whole LUN that hosts the XenServer Storage repository.
Giving you thin provisioning at the LUN/SR but not at the VM level

Peter

Hi Peter,

thanks for your reply. I am afraid I am not sure if I understood everything you said; I am having problems parsing the sentences. Sorry :(

To ask one more specific question: What license do I need to use TP with LUNs?

Well if i am using QNAP iscsi device that supports thin provisioning, i should be ok right?

Hi,
If your storage is supporting thin provisioning then you could enable the TP from storage side. you do not need any license for this on Xenserver.

Regards,
Subash

Is there a way to thin provision VMs on iSCSI LUNs? Is StorageLink an option, even though I'd prefer native support in XenCenter?

Im using XenServer 5.6 with HP P4500 iSCSI SANs, thin provisioned Volumes.

The P4500 (LeftHand) allows you to thin provision a LUN.
When used by XenServer as a normal iSCSI LUN, the LeftHand will be able the whole LUN (with all your VM data in it).

Peter

Hi

I have a xenserver 5.6 sp2 with thin provisioning enabled during installation. Now I want to create a linux vm of 50gb size with LVM as partion type on this server.

Now I have couple of doubts. Is citrix thin provisioning only works for ext3 partion ( of guest os) type and needs to be only a local disk.

All I want to have a centos linux vm of 50gb size /, which does not occupies total 50Gb and will increase when needed. Will it be possible ?

Gopal