Microsoft officially released the next version of Windows last week – Windows 8. While this new release contains various technological advancements, issues with I/O performance and its effect on Windows systems still remains.

Every I/O operation that occurs takes a measureable amount of time. There’s no such thing as an instant I/O request, and simply put, the more I/Os necessary, the longer it will take for Windows to complete a particular task. 

To understand why this is still an issue on Windows 8 and even Windows Server 2012, let’s explore a bit deeper. When data is written within the Windows file system, it is naturally written in a non-optimized way. Thus when an application requests the data, the initial I/O request generally gets broken down and  splits into many additional requests (called split I/Os), and thus increases the time necessary to retrieve the information. So, as this activity naturally occurs on a daily basis, it takes more and more I/O requests and increasingly impacts the performance of your servers and workstations. 

The Windows built-in optimization tool, which is set to run on a weekly basis, attempts to handle the mounting I/O traffic, but that’s after you’ve already experienced the performance impact in the first place. For example, say I’m working on a project on a Tuesday afternoon – how is running the built-in optimization utility on Wednesday going to address this concern?

Proactive Windows I/O acceleration is the key to successful operations and improved response time to users and this is why Condusiv Technologies created our Diskeeper product. Diskeeper’s InvisiTasking and IntelliWrite technologies helps prevent the vast majority of extra I/O requests from occurring and does so without taking any additional resources from the system or other applications. This ensures that you get the least number of I/Os to go to the storage and allows your applications to run that much faster. 

 In fact, recent independent testing by openBench labs shows up to 98% few I/O requests, server throughput increased by 130% and data throughput up to 5X faster on workstations. You can read more of this report here.

We recently responded to a forum post on our YouTube channel regarding SSDs and Defragmentation - you can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hznCSqb4Mzg

Below are some "before and after" graphs that provide proof that fragmentation affects SSDs:

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about built-in defragging systems. Is Windows®7 the best option? In the latest issue of Processor Magazine, experts weigh in, making the case for Diskeeper’s optimization in the enterprise. Read the whole article here: http://www.processor.com/articles//P3402/11p02/11p02.pdf?guid

Have you received your Windows 7 Launch Party Pack yet? Have you sent out the invites? Prepped the guacamole?

There’s not much time left as Thursday, November 22 is the big day. Will you be upgrading your client’s machines (from XP or Vista) to the latest operating system or are you going to perform a “clean” install? I’ve spoken with a number of VAR’s and they’ve indicated a clean install is their preferred method. What’s yours?

Many VAR’s have indicated a slow and steady rollout with some of their customers opting to finally pull the trigger and purchase new pre-installed systems.

And the question I’m asked, “what about Diskeeper… will it work with Windows 7?” is an easy one to answer.

Yes.

Diskeeper 2009 and HyperFast fully support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008r2, and have since we released them back in December 2008. V-locity (our Hyper-V solution), also fully supports the new Windows platforms.

So pace yourselves with the chips and champagne. And remember to install Diskeeper.

Anthony

Diskeeper 2009 and HyperFast fully support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008r2, and have since we released them back in December 2008. V-locity also fully supports the new Windows platforms.

That said, the next major release of Diskeeper (coming soon) will also take advantage of new functionality in Windows 7. Windows 7 allows for additional online metadata defrag, including $Extend  (think USN Journal here) and also $Secure.

This past year, we've also been engaged with Microsoft's Front Runner compatibility program. Microsoft  is going to great lengths to ensure the upgrade process (e.g. install Windows 7 upgrade over Vista) is seamless for their customers. Something I did not see with the Vista release, is the degree of involvement they have required from software vendors such as us, to ensure reliability and stability for users who take the upgrade path.

On to Undelete...

Undelete 2009 will support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 around the time that those new OS'es release to public (i.e. Oct 22nd). We'll post/email instructions for Undelete 2009 customers regarding how to get the new update when the software is available. All in all, supporting Windows 7 has not required significant code changes, but there's a great deal of quality control testing we always require before we can certify our software for release. 

As part of that testing process, a few weeks ago several of our senior developers were at Microsoft's bi-annual IFS PlugFest. PlugFest is a meeting of file system filter driver developers that we've been regularly attending for years. At this interoperability forum, we can test our solutions alongside those from other manufacturers. The perfect timing of this event allowed us to test the updated Undelete on the new Windows platforms with file system filter drivers from other vendors. We also had the opportunity to test some new, very advanced (but as yet unreleased) new technologies!

Early next week we'll publish a new white paper that covers 21 technical points to consider when evaluating a disk optimization solution. While it is focused on IT professionals evaluating Diskeeper for business desktops/laptops, many of the points apply to all users. Test results regarding one such universal consideration is provided below:

Often overlooked, but just as significant as file fragmentation, is free space fragmentation. Fragmented free space will inevitably increase the likelihood and degree of fragmentation of data and system files. Diskeeper has advanced solutions to consolidate space into a small handful of very large segments in order to improve future file-write performance.

Windows Disk Defragmenter (WDD) in Vista provides no option to consolidate file system free space. While tests demonstrate the number of free space segments is reduced after using WDD, a high number (7403 fragments) remain and the average free space segment size increases marginally.  Rather than increasing the size of the largest free space segment, (desirable) the free space segment was reduced from ~39GB to ~10GB.

Compared to the Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter, Diskeeper provided far superior results, eliminating free space fragmentation as a performance issue. Diskeeper grouped free space segments so as to create a much larger average size (measured in the GB) and created a 33+ GB ‘largest’ chunk size.  

While a free space defragmentation command line option has been introduced in Windows 7, test results show free space is less effectively defragmented than in the default mode. 

WDD provides a few command line parameters which allow it to apply different algorithms, each intended to solve fragmentation in various environments; such as ‘run free space consolidation mode.’ Diskeeper includes various, and numerous, defragmentation algorithms. However, at the core of the Diskeeper program is an advanced logic controller that, with a focus on how to best restore file system performance, automatically selects a special algorithm for a particular environment. There is never a need to manually analyze and make administrative decisions and then adjust operational parameters to run a different type of defrag task. If free space fragmentation is a performance issue, Diskeeper dynamically recognizes this and solves the problem without administrative intervention.

In summary, only Diskeeper provides a solution to consolidate free space, thereby preventing file-write performance degradation for future write activity on a given volume.