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March 24, 2006
In the Oven
Here's a couple of development projects in the works.
Diskeeper Server Enterprise Edition will be adding support for the Intel Itanium platform in the next few weeks.
Speaking of Intel, you may be aware that we have a partnership with them and some flavors of Diskeeper ship with their motherboards in the Desktop Utilities CD. That relationship is expanding with the upcoming release of their newest boards later this year. Customers will get to enjoy a special joint software offer from Intel and Diskeeper (on both Servers and Desktops). Stay tuned.
Another in-progress development project is "I-FAAST 2.0" (code-name). There are big plans for the continuing development of I-FAAST, which will continue in parallel with other Diskeeper enhancements. I-FAAST 2.0 is currently planned for inclusion in the next major version release of Diskeeper. I-FAAST is, to briefly review, the disk performance calibration technology first introduced in Diskeeper 10. It sequences the most frequently used files to speed up thier access, and it takes measures to speed up new file writes as well. Unlike other applications of file ordering strategies, this one can be scientifically proven to increase performance- no marketing smoke-and-mirrors and no theoretical mumbo-jumbo; just results. Visit our knowledge center and check out the "Benchmarking I-FAAST" report.
Posted by Michael at 05:43 PM | Comments (7)
Apples to Apples
Following up on Paul's recent posting on free space consolidation, I felt the following blog has some relevance. Please note that Paul's post has received quite a bit of feedback and I will respond to that in the next few days, time permitting, because it is a very involved subject.
Just over three years ago Gartner, a leading IT Analyst group published a report on defragmentation, and specifically the impact of defragmentation methodologies on free space fragmentation. Gartner enjoys a well-earned reputation for quality and accuracy of its reports, and this typically is the case. However, they do on rare occasion make mistakes. I will play devil's advocate and argue a particular little misstep in this report. Keep in mind that the information about the built-in defragmenter is correct; however, the broader conclusion derived from data applies flawed logic.
In this defragmentation report Gartner states "The Windows 2000 Server built-in defragmentation tool is a multi-pass defragmenter that must be run over and over to defragment the disk, especially when defragmenting very large disks with heavy fragmentation and limited free space."
This is all true. You have probably seen this for yourself.
It continues, "As such, multi-pass defragmenters characteristically fragment remaining free space on the disk, which accelerates fragmentation later."
This is where Gartner goes astray. Very plainly stated, Diskeeper is an automatic multi-pass (I always think of Milla Jovavich in Fifth Element when I say that) defragmenter that has always consolidated free space. However the purpose of this blog is not to argue philosophic viewpoints on multi-pass versus single-pass. That's a whole separate lengthy discussion. I will only address the leap in logic.
For the sake of this discussion let's assume that fragmented free space actually does intrinsically accelerate future fragmentation. Again that is another lengthy separate subject, and one that is not black and white, which I will discuss in detail in a few days.
For kicks and giggles, I'll describe the logic in an analogy; embellishing on the story for mild entertainment purposes (well at least it was entertaining for me to write) and then toss in an entirely redundant quiz.
Apples to Apples:
Joe is hungry and, being a health conscious individual, wants a healthy snack. He goes to the local market to get a bite to eat. He passes by the potato chips and candy bars. Noting a green sourball in the candy section his mouth goes into a panic frenzy remembering how much he hates sour food. He quickly recoups and makes his way to the fruit stand. A juicy red apple, glistening with moisture from the recently run fruit-sprinklers, beckons him. He buys and eats the apple, savoring the sweet taste, while thinking; "I love red apples".
Why, pray-tell, does he not think to say "I love apples"? Because Joe is wise and knowledgeable and knows that not all apples are red. Many are green, and they typically have a slightly bitter taste. Joe doesn't like bitter or sour food, (he accidentally ate a crab apple from his backyard when he was 8 years old) and would never think to buy a green apple. In fact, Joe is such a learned individual he knows apples can come in yellow as well, and for that matter, with a little genetic engineering, could probably come in pink polka-dots!
An apple, by commonly agreed definition, has certain similar characteristics - that's why we call them all apples. But, Joe knows that color is just an attribute of the apple, just as is taste (sour/sweet) or size (large/small) or whether it is natural or engineered that distinguishes different types of apples. He knows that all apples are not the same.
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Here's a multiple-guess question as might appear on a Logic/IQ test:
Fact1: Sue is a girl
Fact2: Sue has red hair
Based on this data we can conclude:
A. All girls have red hair
B. Some girls have red hair
C. Stop beating this dead horse, I get the point, so finish the blog already
D. Both B and C, with A being the wrong answer (hint: pick this one)
Posted by Michael at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2006
Microsoft and Diskeeper Agree on Free Space Defrag
There has been some confusion in the past regarding free space defragmentation. Some people in the industry believed that after a defragmentation job free space should be consolidated into one pool. Here at Diskeeper Corporation we have long since maintained that this doesn't make sense (see our whitepaper on this very subject). Moving free space into one consolidated pool is a temporary condition that wastes resources and serves no purpose. Instead free space should be grouped in a few contiguous pools.
I was happy to see Microsoft has recently validated our longstanding position. Checkout the section on free space fragmentation in the new Microsoft TechNet article, Maintaining Windows 2000 Peak Performance through Defragmentation:
"Free Space Fragmentation
A partially full disk contains unused space, known as free space. Ideally, this space would be available in a few contiguous portions of the disk." -Microsoft TechNet
-Paul
Posted by paul.shomo at 09:47 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
March 15, 2006
New Microsoft Defragmentation Recommendations
A new Microsoft TechNet article, Maintaining Windows 2000 Peak Performance through Defragmentation, was recently published. The article provides a very good overview on disk fragmentation.
From 2005 to 2006 Microsoft has improved dramatically in their defrag schedule recommendations, switching from the outdated monthly rule of thumb to recommending a weekly schedule. While Microsoft's recent schedule recommendation is a big improvement, it doesn't go far enough.
In this article Microsoft makes the observation that, "normal, day-to-day use of your computer will cause fragmentation". Even a desktop in a client-server environment (where the data resides on a file server) can see 1,000+ fragments build up on its local disk drive in a single day. Worse yet these fragmented files are probably among a small set of files you use the most. A daily schedule is really the way to go. A daily defrag schedule keeps your defragmentation jobs short and handles fragmentation as it occurs, ensuring no losses in performance.
Posted by paul.shomo at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2006
Defrag your virtual servers daily!
Several months ago I blogged on the importance of defragmenting virtual servers. I was very pleased to see a recent article in Redmond Magazine discussing VMware, storage virtualization and defragmentation. The following is a choice quote from the article:
"Defragment the host's disks as often as possible. Members of the VMware community recommend doing so on a daily basis. With VMware's disk files often consuming gigabytes of space for a single file, even a little fragmentation can significantly impact performance."
More and more people are recognizing the need for daily defragmentation in today's storage environment. A daily schedule keeps defrag jobs short and handles fragmentation as it occurs.
Have you defragged today?
-Paul
Posted by paul.shomo at 12:04 AM | Comments (1)