The main use I have for this is virtual servers being able to use an LVM volume but not occupying all of the space. It saves time in deploying machines and copying them so you are only copying the space they are using (eg. 5GB / 60GB vs the full 60GB). There are some disadvantages which is mainly the fact that thin pools by their nature allow you to "overallocate" disk space which is that you could use more space than is available on the disk itself and corrupt your data........