thin pool
also: thin provisioning pool, LVM thin pool
A logical volume pool that uses thin provisioning to allocate storage space on-demand rather than pre-allocating it, allowing multiple logical volumes to share physical space efficiently.
A thin pool is a special type of logical volume in LVM (Logical Volume Manager) that implements thin provisioning. Instead of allocating all requested space upfront, a thin pool allocates physical extents only when data is actually written, allowing you to over-provision storage and use space more efficiently.
When you create thin logical volumes from a thin pool, each volume appears to have its full allocated size but only consumes actual disk space as needed. For example, you might create ten 100GB thin volumes from a 500GB thin pool; the pool will only use physical space as those volumes write data.
Thin pools are particularly useful in virtualization and container environments where many volumes exist but don't always use their full capacity. They save disk space and enable flexible storage allocation, though they require careful monitoring to prevent the pool from becoming full.