Last year, Kansas-based William Newton Hospital, which serves a community of 40,000 people and has revenues of over $40 million, made the switch to PerfectDisk to improve its virtualization performance. The hospital looked to PerfectDisk's virtualization defrag solutions, which include tools for vSphere performance and Hyper-V performance improvements. William Newton Hospital maintains physical and virtual servers for database functions such as electronic medical record keeping, financial, inventory, lab and radiology information, and Point of Care charting. Medical Verification is also used at patient bedside via wireless Chart Carts and PDAs, along with a radiology image storage and retrieval system.
The big appeal, according to IT director Randy Mayo was PerfectDisk's unique Virtual Awareness capability, which eliminated "the severe system slowdown on our servers that we were experiencing with Diskeeper." As Randy points out, "PerfectDisk automatically determines guest and host activity to eliminate resource contention and minimize the impact on our shared storage. The result is faster systems, improved productivity and better service to our patients.”
But William Newton didn't stop there, as they continued to look to Raxco Software for performance and productivity improvements. This investigation led them to PerfectSpeed, Raxco's tool for boosting performance as well as cleaning up performance-debilitating clutter. While its typical use is for the home consumer, William Newton found so many useful tools for slow PC fixes and slow PC performance in PerfectSpeed that they've put it on over a hundred employees' computers. For these users, Mayo gets not only the benefit of the best defrag software, but also a powerful duplicate file removal program and one of the best registry cleaners, all helping speed up PC performance and ensuring these computers run at peak performance and efficiency.
From virtualization performance to an easy slow PC fix -- William Newton Hospital has found its fix.
Sometimes it's fun to take a step back from all the file system, slow PC tips, and Hyper-V performance counters talk and see how the best defrag software tool plays out in the real world. On its own, a server defrag may seem a little drab. But if you see how it's helping a baseball team, well...that can make it a little more interesting.
The Greater Des Moines Baseball Company is the umbrella company for the Iowa Cubs minor league baseball team of the Pacific Coast League. Recently, the Cubs selected PerfectDisk 11 Server to boost its servers’ performance through disk defragmentation. The Cubs, with several hundred employees serving an annual attendance of over 500,000, use its servers for ticketing, merchandise sales, food and beverage sales, video boards and score boards, video production, financial and back office functions, and database management. The team's servers have several physical and virtual servers on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 to run the business. Prior to selecting PerfectDisk over a competitive product, the Cubs used the Windows built-in disk defrag utility, but it was not up to the task. “Microsoft’s built-in defragmenter did not really accomplish much in terms of improved performance for our server, plus it was very slow,” said Larry Schunk, Chief Technology Officer at Greater Des Moines Baseball. “With PerfectDisk, our servers are running faster than ever, which means all our employees are more productive; in addition, its automation and powerful reporting tools provide a great value.”
You can see the complete press release of the Cubs server defrag selection here.
Play ball. Win. Give your servers a good server defrag with the best defrag software.
The Cubs are in first place. Coincidence? That's crazy talk.
Raxco has been working with VMware the past several months to assess the impact of Windows guest defragmentation on VMware performance. The most recent testing used VMware's vscsiStats utility to capture metrics. The vscsiStats utility sits between the VMware kernel and the Monitor. It captures every IO request through the storage stack and sorts them into various buckets that can be used for performance analysis. We ran our test concurrently using five virtual machines on an ESX 4.0 cluster.
The goal of the test was to determine if Windows guest defragmentation improves virtualization performance. The test was fairly simple; we created a fragmented disk with ISO images and other files and made a copy for each of the five virtual machines. We installed MS Office and MS SQL on each of the VMDKs and measured the results with vscsiStats. After the data collection was done on the fragmented disks, we used PerfectDisk to defragment the files and free space on all of the disks and repeated the tests using the defragmented disks.
The results were pretty impressive on several fronts. First of all, one of the main sources of virtualization overhead occurs when IO have to traverse the virtual storage stack. Our testing showed that when the Windows guests were defragmented with PerfectDisk the total number of IO was reduced by 36.5% and write IO was reduced by 44.6% after the MS SQL installation. This means defragmentation was able to reduce the total IO load by over 1/3 for all IO and it reduced write IO by almost half. How was defragmentation able to do this?
The answer is that while file defragmentation improves file read time, free space consolidation improves file write time by reducing the number of physical accesses needed to write the file. If the guest file system can find sufficient contiguous free space, the likelihood of the file being written in one piece improves. Contiguous free space also means you do bigger writes. The vscsiStats bear this out. The PerfectDisk disk created 11.9 times as many IO greater than 524K, which is the largest vscsiStats bucket size. The vscsiStats histogram illustrates this difference on the far right column.
Disk IO latency was also affected by the file defragmentation and free space consolidation of the Windows guests. As noted above, the Windows file system was able to perform fewer and larger IO when the disk is defragmented and the free space is aggregated in a large chunk. It logically follows that these IO will complete in less time and the vscsiStats again support this assumption. The utility sorts IO into buckets ranging from .001ms to >100ms. Since the average disk drive access time is about 15ms, we viewed all IO taking more than 15ms as a slow IO. The vscsiStats show the defragmented disk reduced the total number of IO taking longer than 15ms by 48.7%.
The final metric that showed improvement due to guest system defragmentation was sequential IO. The vscsiStats utility measures the distance in logical blocks between seeks. This histogram shows that the defragmented disk increased the number of IO that were only one block away (center columns) and decreased the number of IO that were 1000 to 500,000 logical blocks away (left and rightmost columns).
In summary, it appears Windows guest file defragmentation and free space consolidation will:
- Reduce VMware overhead by reducing the total number of IO that traverse the virtual storage stack
- Improve system throughput by producing larger IO
- Reduce system latency by reducing total IO and generating larger IO
- Improve virtualization performance by increasing sequential IO
- Reduce the demand for host CPU, memory and IO resources
- Potentially create a situation where the host can support one or more additional guests due to the resources conserved
To access a complete copy of the white paper detailing the test procedures and results go to www.perfectdisk.com/user_data/white_papers/vmware_multi_test_new.pdf
The debate about whether or not free is good enough for a defrag of the data on your disk drives will likely go on as long as Windows and NTFS are around. I've discussed the merits of third-party defrag software that is not free here before, but I'm not doing that today. However, there are some instances and conditions that lend themselves to a much easier conclusion and a clearer delineation between free and "not free". And I do want to share an interesting user experience with you.
Like the case of the CNN newsroom that was brought to a halt because its servers were so severely fragmented. And a recent story that was brought to my attention by Andrew Hart of Australia. Andrew is a heavy Photoshop user and has 5 1TB hard drives that he gives quite a workout with all he does. And he needed to defrag Windows 7. He gave a couple of freeware defrag tools a try. For his environment, they didn't cut it.
This is how Andy describes his situation:
"After only 3 days of trialing it, albeit to the point of having tried, almost exhaustively, all the available defrag options on very large, heavily fragmented data drives, I have concluded that PerfectDisk 11 PRO is a very competent and comprehensive defragging program. I am very pleased to have it looking after my 5 x 1 Terabyte HDDs in a 64-bit Win 7 computer. On days when I am working in Photoshop CS5, which is quite often, I can generate and delete several gigabytes of image data in a single session, and this makes it virtually mandatory to have a defrag program with robust strength, speed and intelligence to keep my system from becoming bogged down and unresponsive. I have tried the defrag utility built into Win 7 64-bit, as well as another free 64-bit program, but unfortunately neither are quite up to the task of both completely defragging and simultaneously compacting all free space quickly in a single pass. For those requirements I have to look to PerfectDisk."
How to make your PC run faster? There are various things that can help, defragmentation being one. When people look at a defrag utility to defrag Windows 7 or auto defrag XP, at the individual user level, freeware may be considered. But they might not be good enough for the biggest, baddest and ugliest of your drives - the ones with large files that are edited, created and deleted frequently. And when you add things like the ability to find and remove duplicate files, the decision becomes easier still.
Sometimes the best things in life are free. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the best defrag software, free just doesn't cut it.
Hybrid drives use the fundamentals of a hard drive, but add additional capability with RAM or an SSD for increased performance. Wikipedia gives the following definition:
A hybrid drive, hybrid hard drive (HHD), or hybrid hard disk drive (H-HDD) is a type of large-buffer computer hard disk drive. It is different from standard hard drives in that it integrates a cache using non-volatile memory or even a small solid-state drive (SSD). Although the cache typically uses non-volatile flash memory, some drives use battery-backed volatile RAM (a hybrid RAM disk). The flash memory buffer can speed up repeated reads to the same location; a RAM buffer speeds both reads and writes, but must be written to backup storage when power is lost.
Benefits of hybrid drives can include decreased power consumption and heat generation, the ability to boot quicker via faster boot times and faster PC startup, decreased noise, improved reliability, and improved performance.
But there are drawbacks too. Such as lower performance for non-cached data and small disk writes. They are more expensive than regular hard drives and don't last as long. There may actually be more noise and power usage in some cases. And importantly, recover-ability of data can be problematic.
Well, once you've look at all the considerations and do your research, if you do end up with a hybrid, what about defragmentation - do you need a defrag program for your hybrid drive? The short answer is -- yes.
As for the why, it's due to the fact that at the core of a hybrid drive is a good ol' fashion hard disk drive. So just think - if you need to a defrag utility to defrag hard drive, defrag metadata and defrag, you'll need to defrag a hybrid drive -- because a good portion of it is a hard drive. The reading and writing - and therefore the modifying, adding and deleting that causes fragmentation -- ultimately occurs on the hard drive itself. And that had drive is where the NTFS file system resides, along with all its peculiarities and problems.
A lot of activity may occur in a RAM drive (or now, SSD), but when this happens, periodically the data is moved to the hard drive. This periodic flushing of the data occurs within the controller and is determined by the drive manufacturer. But once it ends up on the hard drive, it's prone to fragmentation just like a non-hybrid drive.
Hybrid drive defrag? Yes, and use your best defrag software, as always.
Related Posts:
SSD overview and do I need an SSD defrag -- Part 1
SSD overview and do I need an SSD defrag -- Part 2
This is the concluding post on whether there a need for an SSD defrag, from Greg Hayes' recent white paper.
To maintain SSD write performance, SSD manufactures implement one or more of the following techniques:
Wear Leveling
The SSD controller keeps track of how many erase cycles have been performed on each flash block and dynamically remaps logical to physical blocks to spread out the wear over all the cells in the drive. This means that no one portion wears out faster than another - prolonging the life of the SSD.
Over Provisioning
Over Provisioning provides extra memory capacity (which the user can't access). The SSD controller uses these "extra" cells to more easily create pre-erased blocks - ready to be used in the virtual pool.
TRIM
TRIM allows the SSD controller to remove data from deleted cells so that the next write won't have to move, erase then write. This allows an SSD to maintain write performance for a longer period of time. In order for TRIM to be effective, it has to be implemented in the SSD itself as well as in the Windows operating system. Currently, TRIM is only implemented in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
PerfectDisk and Benefits to SSD storage
With SSD storage, since file level fragmentation results in negligible performance degradation, traditional file-based defragmentation really doesn't provide any performance benefit and should be avoided, as it has the potential to ultimately degrade SSD write performance. What can provide a performance benefit is free space consolidation to eliminate free space fragmentation and consolidate partially full blocks of data. High free space fragmentation is a strong indicator that a high instance of un-TRIM'ed, or partially full blocks exists.
While free space consolidation can help improve write performance, free space consolidation is not something that typically needs to be done on a frequent basis. PerfectDisk 11 will automatically identify SSD storage and if configured to optimize performance, will perform a Consolidate Free Space pass on the drive. PerfectDisk does not perform this pass automatically. You must specifically tell PerfectDisk to optimize the drive. PerfectDisk allows you to perform this pass manually or on a scheduled basis. In addition, you can configure PerfectDisk to only optimize the SSD storage if free space fragmentation exceeds a specified threshold.
You can read the entire white paper here.
Related Post:
SSD overview and do I need an SSD defrag -- Part 1
Microsoft TechNet is a Microsoft program and resource for technical information, news, and events for IT professionals. Along with a website, it produces a monthly subscription magazine titled TechNet Magazine.
In the June 2010 edition of the magazine, Greg Steen gives an overview of PerfectDisk 11 Server in his article Toolbox: New Products for IT Professionals. One thing Steen covers that is sometimes overlooked by IT personnel and also some reviewers, is that PerfectDisk "is both RAID- and SAN-compatible and is certified to run on your Windows server OSes. PerfectDisk 11 is also aware of and can work with SQL Server and Exchange Systems to ensure that those disk arrays stay in good shape."
Green also points out that PerfectDisk 11 can help with virtualization performance with its integrated tools to help vSphere performance and Hyper-V performance, as well as provide SQL Server performance improvements, Exchange defrag, reporting and even its ability to find and delete duplicate files.
PerfectDisk 11 Server in the June 2010 TechNet Magazine -- here.
It's not often that PerfectDisk and disk defragmentation software get into an article on a hot topic like Google Voice in publications like Network World and ComputerWorld. But yesterday was such a day. Okay, you have to read the entire article and it's not the focus of the article, but hey, I'll take it (and for a ComputerWorld, Network World, PC World article all about PerfectDisk, see this).
Mark Gibbs, writing in Network World in an article picked up by ComputerWorld and others, penned Google Voice turned loose and finding duplicated files in an article stating that Google Voice is now available to the public. And not being a Google Voice user right now, I will be soon. After reading Gibbs article, there seem to be many reasons to follow his advice -- "...you should really check it out...."
Besides giving a brief overview of Google Voice, Gibbs turns his focus to duplicate file removal and duplicate file software. It's a key part of a cleaning and streamlining effort he undertakes, writing:
"...what could need cleaning out? The answer: Duplicate files.
On my storage systems I have literally hundreds of projects along with various resources that simply exist for our entertainment (such as iTunes) that I know contain in many cases many duplicate copies of files.
So, in an attempt to streamline my stuff, I decided to try out three de-duplication products..."
I agree wholeheartedly with Mark that duplicate file removal is important and a great way to clean your PC. What Mark didn't mention was that PerfectDisk includes a duplicate file manager for duplicate file removal. However, he does mention that PerfecDisk is handling his disk defragmentation needs on his servers and PCs.
So check out Google Voice, whether or not you need duplicate file software or a defrag utility. And check out Mark Gibbs article in Network World and ComputerWorld here. Mark knows his stuff - he's done just about everything in the networking business, from serving as an executive in various companies to creating companies; and as an author he has written four books and numerous articles about networking and computer technology.
Apparently, he can't be dupped.
I admit, in the day-to-day living of running around and trying to get things done here in the midst of travel and other comings and goings, it's often a challenge to do all the best practices to keep my laptop living as long and efficiently as it can. Of course, I defrag system files and defrag Windows 7 with the best defrag software I know of. That's like getting a PC tuneup every day so my laptop runs as fast as possible and I boot quicker.
But what about the life of the battery itself? I always need to be reminded of the many tips there are to extend battery life, so when I was looking through the new July issue of PC World, the article Breathe New Life Into Your Laptop's Battery got my attention. The usual reminders were there to nag me:
- don't run it down
- keep it cool
- give it a rest
- and more, including a nice set of "myths" debunked.
And keep it cool.
Information Week had a recent cover story entitled Are Your Apps Smart Enough? This got me thinking, like most things do, of defrag programs and the "smarts" that are required to make the best defrag software. After all, any decent defrag utility, even freeware, is going to do a bare minimum (hopefully), to at least attempt to put fragmented files into a single piece and get you faster PC performance.
But how do you know if your defrag program is smart enough to be the best defrag software? Here are 12 to get you started:
- The developers of your defrag utility meet regularly with Microsoft development teams, including file system experts, for a true understanding of file system behaviors, strategies and plans.
- The defrag utility employs disk and file optimization strategies for the best possible drive optimization, rather than simply defragments files, so it is a true PC performance optimizer, beyond just a simple defrag utility.
- It performs robust free space consolidation to significantly prevent fragmentation, reduce the rate of future fragmentation and improve write performance.
- It's smart enough to just defrag a file -- a single file or a few selected files -- rather than the entire drive, if that's all that is fragmented and that's all you need done at a particular time.
- It doesn't force you into a single way to defrag - it provides flexible scheduling options that are accommodating to your activity and requirements, whether you need or want automatic background defragmentation during idle time, screen saver defrag, or daily or weekly schedules.
- It optimizes boot files to improve boot time by 20% or more.
- It provides a free, Microsoft-certified duplicate file remover and file recycler to further assist disk cleanup and optimization efforts.
- It's simple enough for the novice user but with free, optional advanced features for power users.
- It's smart enough to be the choice for tens of thousands of World of Warcraft users around the world to improve World of Warcraft performance and used by millions of gamers around the world to improve the performance of other PC games.
- It's intelligent enough to contain patent-pending technology that ensures no resource contention in virtual environments and can boost virtualization performance with specific solutions for vSphere and Hyper-V.
- It's passed the internal tests, pilot programs and RFPs of many of the world's largest companies and government agencies, and is deployed in and helping those enterprises today.
- It is certified by Microsoft for Windows 7.
It looks like now it's time for the big boys and girls, as all indications are that the move to Windows 7 by businesses is on. In the Computerworld article Windows 7 gets the green light, Robert L. Mitchell details the results of a recent Computerworld survey to IT professionals. It's not a secret that just about all the initial enthusiasm for Windows 7, of which there was a lot, originated from the consumer side. Home users have been quick to embrace Microsoft's latest operating system since its launch several months ago.
Now, the enterprise market is moving, either deploying now, in testing, or planning to deploy over the remainder of 2010 and into next year. Mitchell writes that "after taking a pass on Vista, IT shops are ready to commit to Microsoft's new PC operating system." The top 2 reasons they're moving? They skipped Vista so Windows XP is getting too old, and they just want to keep current. Surprisingly (to me), over a third won't wait for SP1 of Windows 7, while over a quarter expect SP1 to be available by the time they get around to deployment.
While Windows 7 performance is not a primary consideration in the move to Windows 7, it will be a consideration when testing and deployment is ultimately done. And while there is a Windows 7 defragmenter built into the OS as always, the Windows 7 defrag option that comes with Windows 7 is, like its predecessors, not a viable solution for the enterprise. Yes, you can defrag Windows 7 with the built-in function, but only on an individual basis. From a purely functional standpoint, it is not close to the best defrag software. But beyond that, it's not for an IT organization. It lacks enterprise deployment, scheduling, management and reporting capabilities at even the basic level. This is why top IT teams continue to implement robust enterprise defrag programs - the Windows 7 defrag that comes with Windows 7 does not cut it.
With the green light on, the move to Windows 7 by businesses is on. With Windows 7 performance an important aspect of the move, having the best defrag tool is a necessity, and that move is on too.
You can read the entire Computerworld article here.
Related posts (Windows 7 defrag):
Just about every Windows user can benefit from a defrag utility, and the best results come from the best defrag tool. Certain applications and certain uses of the computer can benefit even more, and the area of video performance is one such particular subject. We're happy to count some of the world's best photographers and videographers as PerfectDisk users, but we're just as happy to have recreational and even novice users benefit from improved video performance with PerfectDisk.
I know better than to talk about religion in a blog about technology and disk defragmentation. However, I'm happy to to write about a particular church's use of what it perceives as the best defrag tool for video performance. And that's where the Fundamentalist Baptist Church comes in. Located in in Santa Ana, California, in the heart of Orange County and just a few minutes from Disneyland, is where this defrag and video performance story starts. The chuirch records videos of its sermons and more. I'll let the pastor's words tell the story:
"The main reasons for my choosing PerfectDisk are:
(1) Consolidation of files on hard drive
(2) Defrag/consolidation of system files upon reboot
I do processing of video. I had used Diskeeper, but that software does not do consolidation of files on the hard drive. When you "capture" video on a hard drive, drive consolidation is very, very important. The reason is that, when a file splits due to running into another file ahead of it on the hard drive, it must fragment at the point. This stopping of the file and continuing it at another place on the hard drive can result in lost frames during a video capture. Lost frames are a "no no" for professional quality video capture, because it causes a momentary jump (because of a lost of frames) in movement when played back later. HDV capture from a Canon HV20 HDV video camera using Cineform was the specific application used.
I heard about your software on a Video production blog, from another guy who had the same problem (the need to consolidate files) and he recommended your product."
No matter what religion, there's only one best defrag tool for video performance.
Dennis Lorentsen is responsible for IT systems at EnergiMidt, a local energy and broadband company in Denmark that also offers hosting services. It supplies energy and related services to almost 200,000 customers. EnergiMidt takes approximately 50 Terabytes of backup weekly from hundreds of servers, so "short backup time means everything for us," says Lorentsen.
One of the company's larger servers, which also had all its data split into million of files, had problems finishing its backup before the next weekly backup started. After using PerfectDisk, Lorentsen said "we went from 10-20% fragmentation to 0.1% - 0.4%, which in the end meant that we saved a minimum of 30 hours of precious backup time - on just this one server. It also means that we aren’t forced to expand our tape library with extra drives." And that was just the start, as Lorentsen then moved on to other servers - both physical and virtual servers -- throughout EnergiMidt.
Big savings from a server defrag, in perhaps one of the least likely places.
I’m often asked whether one should or can defragment SQL databases - should you care about SQL defrag. While not an SQL expert, we have looked at this issue a lot and work with numerous organizations that benefit from regular defragmentation of their SQL databases with PerfectDisk. PerfectDisk uses the Microsoft MoveFile APIs, ensuring the SQL defrag of SQL database files is done safely and reliably, without having to first shut down SQL services. This includes both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.
PerfectDisk does not address internal fragmentation of databases. Fragmentation can, and usually does, exist at both the SQL Server level and at the file level within Windows. There is SQL defrag software -- specific vendor tools to address SQL Server-level fragmentation. But defragmenting at the file level, what I refer to as SQL defrag, will usually also speed up your SQL server. The SQL server doesn’t know about the file system layout - it leaves that to the operating system. But that means it also won’t and can’t report on file system fragmentation. And that’s where PerfectDisk comes in.
Besides defragmenting files, PerfectDisk’s free space consolidation via its Space Restoration Technology helps reduce the rate of fragmentation on SQL servers, as PerfectDisk creates large chunks of contiguous free space, which helps as your database grows. Best practice for highly available SQL servers is to create files on contiguous space that’s already been defragmented, planning ahead of time for data growth and building that growth into the size of the initial files.
Don’t leave your SQL servers behind - defrag them. SQL defrag for SQL server performance improvements.
The Microsoft at Work website was put together by the folks in Redmond to help people ”streamline” their work life” so you can spend a little more time on your life…"we hope the information gathered here will help you get—and stay—ahead at the office.” In a collaboration article entitled 5 ways to speed up your PC, Microsoft recommends disk defragmentation as a key component to keeping your PCs running fast. The article states “disk fragmentation slows the overall performance of your system. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. The response time can be significantly longer.”
And Microsoft continues, noting in particular some instances when performing defragmentation is particularly important. These times include:
- adding a large number of files
- free disk space totals 15% or less
- you install new programs or a new version of Windows,
There are always doubters, but coming from the maker of the operating system that it tells us all is so wonderful, the need for defragmentation is clear. Microsoft has designed a file system that fragments. It tells you so and tells you it should be fixed through defragmentation. It's an easy slow PC fix. Now, what you don’t need is one that isn’t automatic, that can’t run with low levels of free space, and has just a fraction of required functionality. Microsoft creates the problem, go to someone else to fix it. I don’t take my kid back to his sick friend to get better….we go to a doctor.
There’s a smarter cure for faster PC performance.
IndyGeek.net was formed last fall "to serve the latest in technology news to both geeks and non-techies alike by using a mix of social media, blogging and in-person networking." According to the site, "we place emphasis on the end user and small businesses looking to gain an edge in the ever-competitive mid-west market."
Well, it turns out the mid-west market is a lot like the rest of the world when looking for faster PC speed, faster PC startup, and overall faster PC performance. In a PC tuneup article on the IndyGeek site last week, Senior Editor Alex Connor wrote about PC Spring Cleaning Done Right, for those looking for faster PC performance. To get faster PC performance, Connor writes that, in his article, "we will use a variety of free tools, and I will recommend a few paid tools where I feel they provide a good value."
Connor covers backup, anti-virus, and cleanup of various files, including temporary files (while not mentioned in the article, PerfectDisk 11 Pro also does cleanup of duplicate and temporary files). Then Alex gets into my favorite part of every story - the defragmentation program:
He writes -- "defragging will usually help performance. Here’s where I make a recommendation – go order PerfectDisk and install it. It will prevent your disk from becoming highly fragmented and it has an offline boot-time defragger that can defrag your system files to really give you a performance boost. I even get a pretty significant runtime boost on my laptop by keeping the disk highly defragmented with PerfectDisk. If you use PerfectDisk, run the defragment on your drive, then do an offline defragmentation of your system files – which will require a reboot..."
For faster PC speed and slow PC tips, IndyGeek has some answers that you can read here.
One way PerfectDisk stands out is its ability to defragment all system files (including all NTFS metadata). System files is the designation that PerfectDisk uses to identify important files that the operating system uses at runtime to operate your PC. These include the Windows paging file (pagefile.sys), the hibernation file used to support sleep mode on desktop Windows PCs (hiberfile.sys), and numerous operating system files (primarily found in the %systemroot% — often C:Windows — and %systemroot%System32 — often C:WindowsSystem32 — directories).
Depending on whether or not the drive is a system drive, or some other drive that PerfectDisk can’t lock, offline file defragmentation may or may not run on the drive(s). As long as PerfectDisk can lock a drive for exclusive access at runtime, it will defragment system files immediately. But for a Windows system disk or any other locked drive — one, for example, where a paging file might reside in a whole or in part — attempts to defragment system files at runtime will usually fail.
These files are then defragmented if the drive is not locked. Otherwise, this occurs at boot time with a boot time defrag. PerfectDisk locks the drive for its own exclusive use, so it can then defragment and move files the operating system would otherwise not allow to be altered. So, a boot time defrag is really only mandatory for drives that cannot be locked at run time.
Occasionally when you schedule a boot time defrag pass in PerfectDisk, it doesn’t work. This is because PerfectDisk is unable to lock the drives during boot time, so the system gets booted without the defrag pass getting executed. When this happens, it is almost always because a third-party program has modified the BootExecute registry key so that PDBoot.exe (the name of the PerfectDisk boot time defragmenation executable file) is no longer the first entry in its value string. This entry must occur first in that key for boot time defrag to run correctly. Another possibility is that a third-party software product has opened the drive for write access before PDBoot.exe can mount the drive for exclusive access. If the drive is open for write access, PerfectDisk will not run a boot time/offline defrag in order to avoid potential damage to or corruption of system files.
All system files…to complete the drive.
The web lit up yesterday with Microsoft's unveiling of the beta for the next integration of its popular Windows Home Server OS -- Windows Home Server Version 2, codenamed Vail. WHS has a passionate fan and install base now, and this group is excited to see Windows Home Server move forward. Since its release, we have seen the high energy and interest from WHS users even as it relates to WHS defrag with our PerfectDisk Windows Home Server solution.
The Microsoft Windows Home Server Blog outlines the 4 key areas of improvement with Vail:
- Extending media streaming outside the home or office
- Multi-PC backup and restore
- Simplified setup and user experience
- Expanded development and customization tools for partners.
And there's something else that has us really excited here at Raxco Software. There are some changes with the Drive Extender technology coming in Vail that will have some big changes in the area of file management. First, a brief overview of Drive Extender - this is how Wikipedia begins its description:
Windows Home Server Drive Extender is a file-based replication system that provides three key capabilities:[16]
- Multi-disk redundancy so that if any given disk fails, data is not lost
- Arbitrary storage expansion by supporting any type of hard disk drive (Serial ATA, USB, FireWire etc.) in any mixture and capacity — similar in concept to JBOD
- A single folder namespace (no drive letters)
The WHS Console is updated and renamed in Vail and is now the Dashboard. Our solution will be fully integrated with the Dashboard and Launchpad, and will also have full management and reporting on usage of the Server Storage Pool. Our solutions will be fully ready when Vail is launched.
Windows Home Server is moving forward with Vail. And we're moving forward with it.
PerfectDisk 11 Windows Home Server info is here.
Based on the testing we did with VMware's Scott Drummond, we recently published a new white paper, The Perfomance Impact of Windows Guests Defragmentation and Free Space Consolidation on VMware ESX. The paper details the results of testing done to determine the effectiveness of defragmenting virtual servers.
The results, from testing done on a VMware ESX Cluster, indicate that defragmentation and free space consolidation of Windows server guests have a positive effect on the performance of both the Windows server guests and the host. While the testing was done on an ESX cluster, due to the nature of the NTFS file system, one could conclude that there would be similar impact across all virtualization performance, including vSphere performance and Hyper-V performance.
The white paper details various real statistics and numbers that we found in our testing. Of course, it is our testing only. We highly encourage IT administrators to do their own testing of defrag's effect on virtualization performance. But we are confident similar conclusions will be reached.
You can see the entire white paper here.
Related Post:
Virtualization performance --Windows guest defragmentation
Scott Drummonds is the performance guy at VMware. All performance-related issues end up on his plate, and he spends much of his time analyzing data along with customer environments to determine how users can get the most out of what they have. From time to time, he's taken a look at disk defragmentation and its impact on virtualization performance.
We got together with Scott to evaluate the impact of guest defragmentation on a single virtual machine. In his widely-read blog, Scott sets up the test:
"Before I describe the test and its results, I want to share an important point on guest defragmentation. Most of the computer literate are aware that file fragmentation–the separation of logically contiguous pieces of a file–can hurt storage performance. But many may not realize that free space fragmentation is as big of an issue. When free space is fragmented, writes take longer and files are re-fragmented rapidly. PerfectDisk defragments files and free space and the results below benefit from both of these improvements."
I'm not going to give away the results here, but I will quote just one of Scott's comments here: "Let me repeat one of those amazing data points: the average IO latency dropped from about 55 ms to less than 4 ms. While this is a phenomenal number, the increase depends on characteristics of the storage system. Since these improvements are configuration dependent, your results may vary considerably."
You can read Scott Drummonds entire post, with lots of data and charts, here.
Get the lowdown on virtualization performance and virtualization defrag from VMware's top performance guy.
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