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Thin clones are based on snapshot technology and are the preferred way to make read/write copies of databases. Similar to regular LUNs, many of the data services, such as snapshots, replications, and host I/O limit, are also available to thin clones. When thin clones are first created, they consume no storage because they share the same blocks as their parent snapshot at the beginning. As new data is written or changes are made to the existing data, new data blocks are allocated and tracked separately from the parent. The data on the thin clones are the same as the parent LUNs but they have different LUN IDs and WWNs. To the operating system, they appear to be different LUNs. However, when Oracle scans for the ASM headers, they contain the same labels and disk group information as the original LUNs. Therefore, it is recommended to attach thin clones on an alternate host to avoid confusion in Oracle and risks in overwriting data on the wrong LUNs.
Thin clone use cases:
Find additional information about thin clones can be found in the Dell Unity: Snapshots and Thin Clones document.