I/O Bottlenecks: Fragmentation | OEM Solutions

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I/O Bottlenecks
A key cause of I/O bottlenecks is fragmentation—the splitting of files into pieces (fragments) to better utilize drive space. It is not uncommon for a file to be split into thousands or even tens of thousands of fragments—hence fragmentation has been an issue to be addressed for the entire history of modern computing.

I/O Bottlenecks
Fragmentation was originally addressed through backing up a drive and then restoring it. This was a cumbersome and time-consuming task that by necessity was performed when a drive was offline. Defragmenters were then developed which could perform defragmentation while a disk was online, shortly followed by scheduled defragmentation. Truly automatic defragmentation was achieved by Condusiv Technologies with their development of InvisiTasking® in 2007.

As advanced as defragmentation became, however, I/O resources were still being wasted. Files would be written to fragmented free spaces, and then defragmentation would address the issue after the fact of fragmentation having occurred.


Read more about IntelliWrite to eliminate I/O Bottlenecks »

Preventing Fragmentation and I/O Bottlenecks


Throughout the entire history of defragmentation, it was evident that the ideal solution would be one which prevented a majority of fragmentation to begin with. In this way, precious I/O resources would be saved. In the write operation, fewer I/Os would be needed as files would be written in as few fragments as possible. In reading files, far fewer I/Os would be required as files already existed in a non-fragmented fashion.

The required breakthrough for fragmentation prevention is IntelliWrite® fragmentation prevention technology, developed by Condusiv Technologies based on a long-term knowledge of the Windows file system. IntelliWrite controls the file system operation and prevents most fragmentation before it ever occurs.

IntelliWrite can be utilized in conjunction with other software products for improved performance of a wide variety of applications: security applications, encryption, backups, and many more. The benefits accrue to an entire system, with substantial savings in resources and even energy consumption.

IntelliWrite’s performance gains are well above those of automatic defragmentation alone, yet can be run in conjunction with automatic defragmentation (highly recommended for ideal performance) or independently. In cases of high-traffic systems on which there are limited times for scheduling or even background defragmentation, improvements are especially notable; in some such cases IntelliWrite may be the only effective measure taken for fragmentation.

Both NTFS and FAT file systems on Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, XP, Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008 including 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2003 are supported. IntelliWrite is completely compatible with hard disks (HDD) and solid state disks (SSD) as well as SAN storage solutions.

It’s interesting to see that SAN manufactures are starting to see a performance issue with their products such that they are having to create new and additional solutions such as PowerPath Multipathing. While it does offer a number of enhancements its main focus is on optimizing performance, load balancing, improving throughput, and efficiency.

The center of their attention is focused on trying to optimize the workload they receive. This reminds me of what Albert Einstein once said, “A clever person solves a problem, but a wise person avoids it.” Diskeeper and V-locity work to optimize and reduce the workload being generated at the source of where the I/O traffic originates at the Guest & Host systems. Diskeeper and V-locity make SAN solutions more efficient and perform faster simply because we eliminate the wasted and unnecessary I/O traffic allowing the SAN to focus on the important tasks as hand.

IntelliWrite is the clear and state-of-the-art solution for I/O bottlenecks in today’s computing environments.

“My favorite is the IntelliWrite technology … disk fragmentation is prevented in the first place, rather than fixed in the aftermath.”

- Franz Kasparec, EMEA-East


“We are also seeing almost 100% fragmentation prevented by IntelliWrite.”

- Joseph F. McEachern, Gordon Brothers Group

Contact OEM sales for more information on IntelliWrite »







 
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