A Thin Clone is a read/write copy of a Thin Block storage resource, such as a LUN, Consistency Group, or VMware VMFS Datastore, that shares blocks with the parent resource. Along with sharing blocks with the source, Thin Clones also share the data reduction and Advanced Deduplication settings, which can only be set on the base storage resource. When data reduction is enabled on the source storage resource, any writes to a Thin Clone are also passed through the data reduction algorithm. All savings achieved on Thin Clones are also reported as a cumulative total with the savings on the source storage resource.

Data reduction and Advanced Deduplication can be enabled or disabled on the source storage resource at any time. Changing the data reduction setting will also control if data reduction is enabled or disabled on all Thin Clones residing on the storage resource. This is also true for the Advanced Deduplication setting. When data reduction or Advanced Deduplication is enabled on the source, no existing data is changed unless overwritten. When data reduction or Advanced Deduplication is disabled, all data is left in its current state. While a Thin Clone exists for a storage resource, Local LUN Move is not available on the source. Also, Local LUN Move is not available for use on a Thin Clone.

More information about Thin Clones can be found in the Dell Unity: Snapshots and Thin Clones white paper found on Dell Technologies Info Hub.