Don't Let This Disease Cripple Your Virtualization ROI

Posted by B. Boyers on Thursday, February 21, 2008 - 03:39 pm:

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While meeting these challenges, the last thing CIOs and IT staffs needs is a hidden, crippling disease affecting every single hard drive in a system. And yet, this is the case with file fragmentation—the saving of files in multiple pieces (fragments) in order to fully utilize disk space, a function of all operating systems. While a major performance problem on a single machine, fragmentation seriously compounds performance issues on multiple virtual machines all accessing the same drive or set of drives.

When a file is accessed on a virtual machines, that request is, of course, passed along to the host system. Hence, multiple requests are occurring for each file request—minimally, one request for the guest system, then another for the host system. But in a common fragmentation scenario, especially with virtual servers creating high amounts of disk activity, files will be fragmented in to tens, hundreds or even thousands of fragments. Imagine the frantic activity with multiple I/Os for each fragment of each and every file requested. The impact on performance is horrendous, affecting IT service and employee production across the boards.

Most sites have implemented some sort of defragmentation solution. Many utilize scheduled defragmentation—a solution which can be schedule to run when server traffic is at a minimum and production won’t be affected. But there are hidden costs associated with scheduled defragmentation that, especially in today’s frantic computer environments, can reduce or even eliminate the ROI that defragmentation should provide. IT staff are having to take the time to analyze fragmentation—another severe challenge in a virtual environment—and worst of all scheduled defragmentation, since it only runs periodically, is actually leaving performance-crippling fragmentation behind.

The best possible solution, one which is only now becoming available, is a constant background defragmentation solution which requires no scheduling and which has no impact on system resources. IT no longer need to spend time with it, and can continue to address problems and employ solutions to better service company personnel and customers. And best of all, such a solution is constantly defragmenting, which means no more file fragmentation and an end to this hidden crippling disease.