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November 03, 2007
Diskeeper 2008 HomeServer is here!
As those who have followed this blog already know we formed a marketing partnership early on with Microsoft on their exciting new Windows Home Server (WHS) product. While both Microsoft and Diskeeper have had OEM versions of software available earlier this year (Diskeeper 2007 HomeServer has been available since August), Diskeeper coordinated a simultaneous release today, of our official product to the retail market with Microsoft's WHS retail release.
"Diskeeper has worked with Microsoft since Windows NT," said Steven VanRoekel, director of Windows Server Solutions at Microsoft. "It is great to work with them on the Windows Home Server platform to provide the maximum system performance and reliability possible to our customers."
The Diskeeper 2008 HomeServer provides functionality and accessibility uniquely necessary for WHS. The most visually evident addition is the new integration with the WHS management console.
However, under the covers lies an even more vital feature that makes Diskeeper compatible with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
Microsoft's new Drive Extender technical paper provides a warning against running the built-in defragmenter on WHS.
"Caution: You should not use the DEFRAG utility on your Windows Home Server hard drives... The DEFRAG utility may cause issues with the Volume Shadow Copy Service that runs every 12 hours to create previous version snapshots of the shared folders on the home server."
Microsoft Support Article #312067 describes the technical details of the issue with VSS from which this warning originates, as it also affects Windows Home Server. Diskeeper engineers addressed this known incompatibility with defragmentation in Diskeeper 2008’s with a specialized new VSS-Compatible Mode. Using unique file movement algorithms via the online file movement control (FSCTL_MOVE_FILE) mechanism, the impact on VSS with Diskeeper 2008 is dramatically minimized allowing users to access previous versions of files that other solutions, without a VSS-Compatible defragmentation mode, would not.
With Real-Time defragmentation, InvisiTasking, and all the new Diskeeper 2008 functionality also included Diskeeper HomeServer is ready to keep your new WHS system running at peak performance.
Posted by Michael at November 3, 2007 02:16 AM
Comments
I like your product but feel it is to expensive, it is half the cost of the operating system. You will get more people to buy it if you ask a fair price for it.
Posted by: Phil at December 4, 2007 08:01 PM
Does this also work with premade servers like the HP Media Smart Server Series? And included with the download I take it that there are instructions?
If anyone could advise it would be appreciated
Posted by: Damian Shepard at December 14, 2007 04:48 AM
HI Damian,
Yes it works fine with that system. You can get the user manual/instructions from the downloads page: http://www.diskeeper.com/downloads/downloads-r.asp.
Posted by: Michael at December 16, 2007 02:39 AM
With 5 hard drives on WHS acting as 1 large volume can diskeeper move the files to best use all the drives.
Posted by: pete at December 17, 2007 04:29 PM
Hi Pete,
I assume your question is geared to speed/performance? To answer that, there is no file placement technology in Diskeeper HomeServer such as I-FAAST. We may add this in a future release.
As far as distribution of data across the disks, that is up WHS Drive Extender which already plans out how to balance the data across the disks.
The best thing to do to achieve optimal disk performance is to use disk striping on your motherboard/controller (RAID 0) and then let WHS build a volume ontop of that. A second large single drive can act as the data duplication disk. However, as you add disks you won'y have control of where they are placed (on the striped set or the new single disk) without re-building the stripe set. WHS Drive Extender is great for ease of use, flexibility and redundancy, but not for read/write performance. Given that WHS is intended as a centralized storage system and not a day-to-day production box, that makes sense.
Posted by: Michael at December 17, 2007 06:53 PM
My WHS says that the MFT is 99% full. Is it safe to enlarge it.
Posted by: Peter at January 3, 2008 08:36 PM
Hi Peter,
FragShield in Diskeeper 2008 will take care of your MFT automatically. You no longer need to expand it manually.
Posted by: Michael at January 10, 2008 06:55 PM
After loading diskeeper, which drives are recommended for defragmentation and which ones should we shy away from?
Posted by: Damian at August 15, 2008 10:58 PM
Hi Damian,
It is recommended to defragment all WHS drives. I have my Home Server set to defragment all drives automatically.
Posted by: Michael at August 19, 2008 06:28 PM