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A storage virtualisation technology developed for primary storage capacity reduction, thin provisioning has been increasingly deployed as datacentres have come under pressure to do more with less. Among study participants, the use of thin provisioning grew 30% since TheInfoPro’s previous storage study, which was conducted six months prior. Over this same period, the number of respondents that had implemented thin provisioning in their datacentres or had plans to do so grew by more than 12%.

“Although Wave 13 participants clearly indicated that budgetary shrinkage is decelerating, the economic pressures of a down economy have continued to influence storage virtualisation technology adoption uptake,” said Robert Stevenson, managing director of storage research for TheInfoPro. “Budget pressure has made thin provisioning one of the hottest technologies in storage as organisations continue to focus on improving storage capacity utilisation and easing storage management. And an overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that, architecturally, the best place for thin provisioning to reside is within the array rather than a block virtualisation appliance, the server virtualisation machine, or host volume services.”

Since introducing 3PAR Thin Provisioning 2002, 3PAR has been a leading provider of thin provisioning software. In October of 2009, 3PAR upped the ante by announcing the introduction of a new suite of thin software products that use the 3PAR InServ® Storage Server’s Thin Built In™ hardware architecture to further slash technology refresh and ongoing storage costs by up to 60%. According to private research recently conducted by 3PAR through TechValidate (www.techvalidate.com), 100% of participating 3PAR Utility Storage customers able to quantify their savings said that over the previous 12 months they had reduced storage capacity purchases and associated CAPEX by at least 25% as a result of moving to 3PAR Utility Storage.

Following up on these new thin technology introductions, in January of this year 3PAR introduced the Get Thin Guarantee Program, which guarantees capacity savings of at least 50% to 3PAR Utility Storage customers converting from fully allocated “fat” volumes on legacy storage to thin volumes on any 3PAR InServ Storage Server with Thin Built In™. Under the terms of the program, 3PAR guarantees participating customers that they will halve the amount of raw capacity required to store existing data—in effect through storage capacity “liposuction”—or 3PAR will make up for the shortfall with free additional disk capacity, software, and support.

“For service providers, enterprises, and government agencies seeking the financial benefits of primary storage capacity reduction, thin provisioning is a proven technology, and 3PAR customers have shown results from deploying it,” said David Scott, 3PAR President and CEO. “3PAR has continued to demonstrate leadership in array-based thin provisioning innovation, which end users have acknowledged is architecturally superior to bolt-on approaches. Not only is 3PAR the first storage vendor to build thin technologies into the hardware architecture of our arrays, but we are also the only storage vendor to offer a comprehensive strategy that includes technologies for starting thin, getting thin, and staying thin.”

The 3PAR Get Thin Guarantee program is currently available to eligible customers.