Storage Solutions
How to Increase Storage Performance
for Modern Storage Devices
The task of maintaining peak storage performance is critical for the modern storage
administrator. More and more mission critical applications rely on the shared storage
infrastructure for real-time activities. The fact is, these new storage technologies
have absolutely improved storage performance, flexibility and manageability, but
they have not solved the issues generated at the file system level, such as file fragmentation.
File fragmentation is a phenomenon which affects
storage
space causing it to be used inefficiently thereby reducing storage capacity and storage performance. File fragmentation
can result in a significant increase in latency, application freezes, system hangs, long disk queue
lengths, split I/Os and more problems. More specifically,
file fragmentation occurs when pieces of a file or free space are broken up into a lot of small pieces
and randomly scattered across the logical volume. Fragmentation of a volume typically occurs as a result
of saving, resizing and deleting files to fit within the available free storage space.
Fragmentation is a natural occurrence based on the way the Windows operating system stores data on
the logical volume by breaking files into pieces all around – tens, hundreds, even thousands of pieces
per file! Fragmentation negatively affects storage performance, reliability and longevity.
Identify Common Reliability and Stability Problems Caused by Fragmentation »
How do I increase my storage performance?
As storage solutions and infrastructures have evolved, so have solutions to address
fragmentation. "Prevention is better than the cure" is a popular and very IT applicable
idiom. That philosophy, applied to preventing fragmentation with sophisticated new
technology (i.e.,IntelliWrite® fragmentation prevention technology), is the ultimate
solution to maximizing performance of modern storage solutions. IntelliWrite®
is the first fragmentation prevention technology that only technology that is 100% compatible
Physical storage devices and controllers will optimize the location of blocks across the underlying
physical spindles according to their proprietary methods; The SAN layer receives unnecessary I/O
requests from the file system, unaware of fragmentation at the operating system layer. SAN devices
do not have the tools to handle file and free space fragmentation.
The need to optimize virtual disks, SAN, RAID, SATA, SCSI, NAS, HHD and SSD devices
continues today, just as it has in the past. When bottlenecks occur in the disk
subsystem, file fragmentation is a factor that should always be investigated as
a contributing factor. To gauge the impact of fragmentation, use performance monitoring
tools such as Windows Performance Monitor, or other benchmarking tools. You will find that
fragmentation is relevant more than ever even with new storage technologies.
Investigating fragmentation is inexpensive requiring only some investigatory
time. The evaluation software can be obtained for free, and the time required to
test is far less than evaluating hardware solutions. Licensing
and managing file I/O optimization software will be far less expensive than hardware solutions
and will provide a significant and immediate return on investment.
Diskeeper® file I/O performance software
resolves the issue of fragmentation by preventing up to 85% of fragmentation from occurring.
Fragments that are not prevented are instantaneously defragmented before they can affect storage performance.
V-locity® VM accelerator
does the same for virtual machines, resulting in increased VM storage performance and efficiency.
"I do believe Diskeeper is critical in storage performance. Without such a product,
performance over time will deteriorate to unacceptable levels reducing efficiency
and causing frustration in the end user community. This situation cannot be allowed.
Diskeeper is a silent sentinel taking one concern away from our client services
people, and freeing them to work on other issues."
Mark Lecuyer, Distribution Applications, Engineering Systems Department
Manitoba Hydro
Download
a free trial of Diskeeper or V-locity to increase your storage performance today »