Thin provisioning, in a shared-storage environment, provides a method for optimizing utilization of available storage. It relies on on-demand allocation of blocks of data versus the traditional method of allocating all the blocks in advance. This methodology eliminates almost all whitespace which helps avoid the poor utilization rates, often as low as 10%, that occur in the traditional storage allocation method where large pools of storage capacity are allocated to individual servers but remain unused (not written to). This traditional model is often called "fat" or "thick" provisioning.