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3.3.2.2. Sparsely Allocated Storage

In this model, the administrator defines the total storage to be logically assigned to a virtual machine and the storage is allocated on disk on an as needed basis. When the space has been allocated, it is not discarded even if the data that uses the storage has been deleted. Sparsely allocated storage is appropriate for virtual machines with low or medium intensity I/O tasks with some tolerance for latency in storage. Generally, desktop virtual machines fit this description.
Note that if thin provisioning functionality is provided by the storage back end, it should be used as the preferred implementation of thin provisioning. If this is the case, then storage should be provisioned from the graphical user interface as preallocated, leaving thin provisioning to the back end solution.