The dynamic thin provisioning mechanism is based on a simple concept : rather than allocating a fixed capacity for the virtual disks, with the risk of having reserved but unused space, the size of the virtual disks is allocated dynamically as and when actual storage needs arise.

For example, if a virtual hard disk with a total capacity of 100 GB is configured, but only 20 GB of data is stored on this disk, in thin and dynamic allocation, the virtual hard disk will only occupy 20 GB of the physical disk space. In the case of static allocation, it would occupy the 100 GB of capacity initially allocated.

Difference between static allocation and fine and dynamic allocation :

Static allocation: the configured capacity (in grey) is immediately allocated.

Fine and dynamic allocation : the configured capacity (in grey) is only allocated as the disk is written to (in colour).

To maintain the advantage of this storage mechanism, Beemo has developed thin and dynamic disk backup, or thin disks, for ESX and Hyper-V environments.

When backing up virtual machines, the ESX plugin inspects the disk(s) present on the virtual machine and analyses their allocation mode. If the virtual machine contains light disks they will be backed up in a way that respects their characteristics. This means that only the space allocated on the virtual disks will be copied to the backup box and not the total capacity initially configured.

The advantage of this technology is that the backup is much faster, since only the data actually stored on the virtual hard disk is copied to the backup box. This means less space is used on the backup box, and the time taken to compress and encrypt the data is shorter.

Restoration is also becoming faster for the same reasons. In addition, when restoring, the restored virtual hard disk will have the same properties as at the time of the backup and will occupy the same space.

This backup mechanism also applies to heavy disks, in static allocation mode, in the event that the configured storage capacity is not fully allocated at the time of backup, in both ESX and Hyper-V environments.