Suppose a company needs to provide multiple services, including email and web disks, but their storage capacity is limited. The company plans to use SmartThin to optimize the storage space usage. Which of the following statements is NOT true about SmartThin?

• A. SmartThin virtualizes storage resources.
• B. SmartThin implements on-demand allocation.
• C. SmartThin does not allocate all space in advance. It presents a virtual storage space larger than the physical storage space.
• D. LUN whose capacity is greater than the maximum physical available capacity of the storage pool cannot be created.

Answer: (A)

The key idea here is thin provisioning. SmartThin lets you present a larger logical storage space to hosts (or services) than there is physically available, and actual blocks are allocated only when data is written. This enables multiple services, like email and web disks, to start with more apparent capacity and grow into it over time without preallocating all the space.

The statement that SmartThin virtualizes storage resources is not true in this context. SmartThin focuses on thin provisioning within the storage pool and presenting virtual capacity, but it does not perform full, system-wide virtualization of all storage resources across devices as a separate, abstracted pool. In other words, it provides on-demand allocation and virtual-sized LUNs within the existing physical pool, rather than creating an entirely virtualized resource layer that abstractly pools multiple storage arrays.

The other statements align with how thin provisioning behaves: it implements on-demand allocation, it does not allocate all space in advance, and it presents a virtual storage space larger than the physical space available (subject to the pool’s configured limits).