Dell Unity’s unique file system architecture and unified storage pools allow for extreme flexibility as changes arise in file storage environments. File systems provisioned in Unisphere are thin by default, which is required for data reduction. Also, starting with OE version 4.2, Unisphere also provides the ability to create thick file systems. Previously, thick file systems could only be created using CLI. There is no way to convert from thin to thick or thick to thin after a file system is created.

File systems can easily be extended to provide more capacity or shrunk to reclaim unused space back to the unified pool to be available for use by any type of resource. Dell Unity also intelligently monitors thin file systems continuously for suboptimal space utilization and initiates automatic extension and shrink operations as needed to ensure capacity is being used as efficiently as possible. These operations are fully integrated with all of Dell Unity’s features to ensure that file system size can always be modified to best fit changing environments without impacting or being restricted by data protection or performance requirements.