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.
Those of you who have followed us for at least the last couple of years have observed our entry into the virtualization performance space. As we pioneered technology such as PerfectDisk's patent-pending Virtual Awareness for vSphere performance and Hyper-V performance tuning, we've talked directly to hundred of enterprise and small business users. We've received lots of feedback on both the technology as well as the business side -- licensing and pricing.
In ComputerWorld today, Elisabeth Horwitt has a piece on Virtualization and software pricing: Very tricky. Elisabeth raises several interesting points, including:
Virtualization can provide significant TCO savings for server and desktop hardware, and in desktop software and security administration. But saving on software license costs through virtualization is problematic. For one thing, vendors can't seem to agree on a model that works for both them and their customers, says Amy Konary, a research director at IDC.
Many enterprise software vendors still charge per hardware box, which means customers can save by consolidating applications on a single server that has multiple CPUs. However, a growing number of vendors, such as Oracle, charge per CPU, says Altimeter Group partner Ray Wang.
For a time, we had internal disagreements as well. And we've modified our pricing since moved into the virtualization space. But as we continued to talk to organizations, we finally came to a pricing model that we are very comfortable with, as are the businesses and government agencies that are customers of PerfectDisk's virtualization performance products. This pricing model has been with us now for several months. Companies that have been with us for years know we try to be their partner in the performance management aspect of their business. And because cost savings are a key motivator for moving to virtualization, we didn't want to be an obstacle to that goal. So we charge by the hardware box, which, as analyst Ray Wang notes, means customers can save money.
Many factors come into play as organizations move to virtualization, or look to maximize its benefits once they have moved. Virtualization performance is a key aspect of the process. After all, the potential cost savings don't mean a lot if performance degrades. As IT delves into the environment, it usually learns that all the problems associated with the Windows environment at the physical level haven't gone away. In fact, they may have multiplied because of the very nature of the host/guest relationship and interaction. Since they are so entwined, if the relationship between host and guest do not account for each other, virtualizaton performance suffers, with the resulting negative impact across the board.
Despite the obstacles and potential pitfalls, virtualization can, in most cases, provide numerous benefits. One of those is cost. We look to help organizations maximize the benefits with improved performance, without the downside of screwing the customer on the pricing side.
Virtualization performance via vSphere defrag and Hyper-V defrag -- you can get premier performance without paying a premium price.
For those of you that have read this space in the past, you'll notice a slight change. The Raxco Software logo has replaced the PerfectDisk logo for our blog. And
www.perfectdiskblog.com will still get you here, but so will
www.raxcoblog.com, and that's the name it will go by.
PerfectDisk, as the best disk defrag software, continues to be our flagship product. But as you've seen recently, there are more and more members of the PerfectDisk family, including our virtualization offerings, upcoming Vail (Windows Home Server R2) and Aurora solutions, and a lot more. There's PerfectSpeed, with its suite of solutions on how to make your PC faster. Plus there are new products in the works, which you'll be seeing in the coming months.
All of this, combined with our 30-plus years of history providing solutions for IT professionals, made it the right time to begin to move toward more of an emphasis on Raxco. You can continue to look to PerfectDisk for more innovation and industry leadership, and look to Raxco Software to continue to bring you more solutions -- for IT groups and for home consumers.
Bookmark it -- www.raxcoblog.com.
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.
Redmond Magazine recently reported a problem with Windows 7 and video performance, where the VC-1 video codec does not use all of the cores in three-core and six-core machines. What does this mean? Well, if you've purchased a new computer with Windows 7 for better graphics and video support, you may not be getting all you signed up for. For example, Blu-ray disc players aren't leveraging the power of some multicore machines running Windows 7.
The issue may also affect Xbox 360 game consoles, which also use VC-1, as well as a few other video codecs. Codecs compress and decompress media files. Most computer users probably don't care about them, as long as the video frames run smoothly. But many do.
As Redmond reports, there's no word from Microsoft on when the problem with the VC-1 video codec in Windows 7 will be resolved. 
In the meantime (and afterward), thousands of videographers, graphic designers and the like turn to thorough disk defragmentation to boost their video performance. Particularly when you're doing lots of editing, with large files changing and being deleted, video performance can take a big hit. That's why so many of them turn to defragmentation utilities like PerfectDisk to keep video performance humming along.
Fast defrag. Faster defrag performance. All leading to better video performance.
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.
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.
It also made me feel good that my choice for best defrag software includes a Power Option that allows me to stop a current defrag pass, as well as not even start a defrag pass, if my laptop is on battery power. My selections get checks for those boxes! So if it seems like you're constantly coming and going, and starting and stopping, it's a wise move to follow extended battery life practices.
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.
Make sure your defrag tool is smart enough to be the best defrag software possible.
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.
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.
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.
Writing over at the Information Week Storage blog, Storage Switzerland's George Crump last week laid out an interesting analogy with a post titled Storage Checkers vs. Chess. Crump sets up his premise with this:
Checkers is a two dimensional game where all the pieces have the same ability. Its about covering space. Chess is a complex three dimensional game where all the pieces have different capabilities and there is one common target: the enemy’s king. In storage some features begin to look like checkers because they have become so commonplace, but when you dig deeper you find that the capabilities of these features between vendors vary greatly.
Crump writes about snapshot technology, thin provisioning, deduplication, auto-tiering, compression and replication as basic capabilities that can be vastly different on further review.
George's post really struck a chord here, because we often have conversations with consumers and IT administrators who had always thought a defragger is a defragger is a defragger when you defrag Windows. It's just not the case. Sure, anyone can put together a checklist and give themselves as many checks as they desire. Free space consolidation? Sure, they say, we do that. Large drive support? Yup. Improve virtualization performance with virtualization defrag? Of course.
But upon further review, which can include actual testing of the defrag products and review of user forums that discuss slow PC tips and the like, one can learn a lot more. Like which product does the most complete free space consolidation. Which is the best defrag tool for large drives, without charging extra for the privilege. And which has specific defrag solutions to improve vSphere performance and Hyper-V performance. To name just a few check list features.
Crump concludes, "when considering your storage options make sure you are playing chess, not checkers."
The same advice should go for considering the best defrag tool.
I like Windows 7. Lots of people and critics like Windows 7, and more companies are beginning the process of moving, or at least planning, to move to Windows 7. But it's not perfect, as I've also pointed out before, focusing in particular on the Windows 7 defrag shortcomings.
This past week, eWeek's Nicholas Kolakowski wrote about 5 Windows 7 issues that every IT pro needs to know, which I found interesting because it touched on some real world scenarios that an organization must face when moving to Windows 7. The five issues Nicholas calls out are:
- Lack of upgrade path between Windows XP and Windows 7
- Libraries functionality
- Legacy applications backwards compatibility
- Occasional battery life issues for laptops running Windows 7
- Early drive incompatibility.
Some of these issues may or may not be a problem for any particular organization. For example, not everyone has experienced battery life issues, and Microsoft denies it is even an issue at all. And depending on your level of expertise, upgrading from XP to Windows 7 may or may not be an issue.
But the point is, as with any major upgrade, things may not be as simple and straightforward as they appear. And that's the case with the Windows 7 defrag - sounds decent on paper, but there's more to the story. Even ignoring even the quality, thoroughness and flexibility, a key thing for IT managers is management and control of the process. There is no management and control of the built-in Windows 7 defrag. So if you're looking to speed up PC performance across the enterprise and also manage and report on the process, you'll run into roadblocks with the built-in Windows 7 defrag. We've outlined the administrative issues and a lot more in a
white paper previously released.
Windows 7 offer a lot. But particularly for IT pros, things are not necessarily as straightforward as they may seem.
You can see the entire eWeek set of slides
here.
Related posts:
The French, German and Spanish versions of PerfectDisk 11 Home, Professional, Server, Exchange and Windows Home Server are now available for download. The PerfectDisk 11 Download Center (
http://www.perfectdisk.com/pd11-download-center) has been updated to include these downloads.
Get PerfectDisk and defrag news like this earlier — follow
PerfectDisk on Twitter.
Get the best disk defrag tool in English, French, German, Spanish at the
PerfetDisk 11 Download Center.
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)
We have been briefed by Microsoft and have details on changes being made with Drive Extender. We are unable to give specifics on this until this part of Vail is announced by Microsoft. But we can say that we are working on new Drive Extender-specific technology that we will announce as soon as we can legally disclose information. The technology that we are working on with Microsoft deals with free space consolidation, and goes in a direction that is outside of disk defragmentation.
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
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