Newskeeper Volume 4 Issue 13storage.diskeeper.com/28117/pdf/Newskeeper_Vol4Issue13... · 2013-06-03 · desktops and servers. ... Top 5 Reasons Customers Use Diskeeper on Their Servers.

Keeping Your SQL Server Databases Defragmented with Diskeeper See page 5

Experience Diskeeper on Your Entire Site— Get the Benefits These Customers Do

See page 3 Why every system at your site needs Diskeeper

®

Volume 4 • Issue 13

Experience Diskeeper on Your Entire Site— Get the Benefits These Customers Do 3Keeping Your SQL Server® Databases Defragmented with Diskeeper 5The Diskeeper Corporation Maintenance Agreement—Protection for Your Volume License Investment 7How Fragmentation Impacts Every Workstation at Every Site 8 Diskeeper & Email Servers 10From Our Developers: The Story Behind the Titan Defrag Engine™ 11Windows® IT Pro White Paper: The Impact of Disk Fragmentation on Servers 12Case Study: No Downtime for KSPS Public Television 14Saving Time, Money and Manpower: 12 Reasons Diskeeper is an Essential Part of Your Network Infrastructure 15

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About Diskeeper CorporAtionInnovators in Performance and Reliability Technologies®

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C o n t A C t D e t A i l s

Diskeeper Corporation, formerly Executive Software®, was founded on July 22, 1981 and has contributed such technical innovations as Diskeeper with InvisiTasking, I-FAAST® and HyperFast technologies.

With over 35 million licenses sold, large corporations and home users alike rely on Diskeeper software to provide unparalleled performance and reliability to their laptops, desktops and servers. Diskeeper Corporation further provides real-time data protection and file recovery with Undelete®. A variety of system management tools, trialware and free utilities are available at www.diskeeper.com.

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D i s k e e p e r C o r p o r A t i o n p r o D u C t sInnovators in Performance and Reliability Technologies®

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V-locity™

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3

As Diskeeper Corporation customers, you have one thing in common: you rely on Diskeeper to keep your servers and workstations reliable, working at peak performance and to greatly increase produc-tion at your company.

Recently, we surveyed several hundred of our customers to share opinions and find out exactly what benefits they are experiencing by using Diskeeper.

The Top 5 Benefits ListWhen asked what benefits are received from defragmenting servers and workstations with Diskeeper, the number one answer was “automatic operations”, our tried and true feature that allows Diskeeper to work unobtrusively in the background, while boosting speed and performance. Other answers were also close behind in the ranking. (See tables to the right.)

ProductivityOver the years, many lab tests have shown the increase in system performance due to defragmenting workstations and servers. As users, you experience this every day. This system performance boost helps to increase productivity at your site. Nearly 100% of those surveyed saw a 5% or more increase in productivity at their site while 69% had a 15% or more increase. (See top chart on next page.)

Experience Diskeeper on Your Entire Site—Get The Benefits These Customers Do

Top 5 Reasons Customers Use Diskeeper on Their Workstations

continued on next page

Top 5 Reasons Customers Use Diskeeper on Their Servers

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Administrative OverheadDue to Diskeeper’s rock-solid functionality, advanced automa-tion and centralized management, customers report significant DECREASES in administrative overhead.

Ninety-six percent of those surveyed reported a 5% or more decrease in administrative overhead with 63% reporting a 15% or more decrease. (See bottom chart.)

Diskeeper Site-WideIt’s clear that there are big benefits to running Diskeeper on both servers and workstations, as confirmed by our customer survey. These are the benefits you should be experiencing when Diskeeper is run on every single Windows machine at your site. Over 72% of our customers surveyed said they agreed and would like to have it for their entire site.

Get the peak performance and increased reliability that Diskeeper can give your entire site. With Diskeeper’s centralized manage-ment deploying is quick and easy. Performance increases, administrative overhead decreases. Automatically.

Call your favorite reseller, or your Diskeeper Corporation Account Representative today for a site-wide quote on Diskeeper—800-829-6468, code 9236.

A ll SQL Server databases, over time, experience “internal” fragmentation of its data. This occurs when records are removed from database pages, but the space it occupied

is still there after deletion. Eventually this space is reused, but as it is reused, the data pages become fragmented, which can lead to unnecessary I/O, especially in case of table scans where many data pages are read, one after another.

In SQL Server, there are several ways to defrag internal frag-mentation. One of these methods is to use the DBCC REINDEX command to rebuild clustered and non-clustered indexes. Once indexes are rebuilt, data pages are now logically contiguous, and disk I/O is minimized.

Unfortunately, internal fragmentation is only part of the fragmen-tation problem. When DBCC REINDEX is run, it does nothing about “external” fragmentation. External fragmentation refers to the fragmentation of files on your server’s disks, which can cause as much, if not more, unnecessary I/O activity as internal fragmentation. Unnecessary I/O activity, as you would expect, hurts SQL Server’s overall performance.

SQL Server databases are made up of large database and log files that are pre-allocated in size at the point of their creation. If there is enough contiguous empty space on disk when the original files are created, then they will not be fragmented. But if the empty space available is not contiguous, then these original database and log files will be fragmented.

Even if the original database and log files are not fragmented when they are first created, they will almost certainly become fragmented as the database grows over time. For example, if you set the original database size to 100MB and the log to 10MB, and you have them set to grow automatically, and if eventually the database grows to 5GB in size and the log grows to 100MB in size, external fragmentation could become great. Every time the database or log files grow automatically, there is the potential for external fragmentation.

To defrag external fragmentation takes an operating system utility, not a SQL Server utility. One of the most popular tools for defragmenting SQL Server database files is a tool from Diskeeper Corporation called Diskeeper. Diskeeper has been around for many years, and many of you may already be famil-iar with it, at least as how it is used for Windows file and print servers. What many DBA’s aren’t familiar with is that it is the best tool for defragmenting external fragmentation on their SQL Servers.

When an external fragmentation tool like Diskeeper runs, it does not restructure the internal contents of the file, unlike DBCC

REINDEX. After Diskeeper defragments a file, the defragmented file will be a bit for bit duplicate of the original. Therefore, any holes within the database are still present and you will still need, from time to time, to rebuild your indexes to combat inter-nal fragmentation.

There are two types of external fragmentation with which a util-ity like Diskeeper deals with: file fragmentation and free space fragmentation. File fragmentation concerns computer disk files that are not whole, but rather are broken into scattered parts; while free space fragmentation means that the empty space on a disk is broken into scattered parts rather than being collected all in one big empty space. File fragmentation causes problems with accessing data stored in computer disk files, while free space fragmentation may cause problems creating new data files or extending (adding to) old ones.

So when Diskeeper runs, it acts to defrag database and log files so that instead of being made up of many pieces, the file is one contiguous segment. In addition, Diskeeper defrags free space so that when database or log files expand, they can expand with little or no fragmentation. But this does not last forever. Eventually, fragmentation becomes a problem, and the database and log files need to be defragged again. Ideally, defragging should be performed on a real-time basis to prevent unnecessary fragmentation from occurring and impact-ing performance.

Now here is something you probably have not thought of before. What effect does file fragmentation have on rebuilding your SQL Server indexes? In other words, if you don’t perform file defrag-mentation, but you perform an internal index/record defragmen-tation, are there any downsides to this?

Yes, there can be. Because the files are fragmented, it will take SQL Server much more time, and I/O, to rebuild its indexes on fragmented files than it does on contiguous files. This means that before you perform an internal defragmentation process that you might want to perform a file defragmentation process first. This way, you reduce how long it takes to rebuild your indexes, and you also reduce the I/O load on your server during the index rebuilding process.

While SQL Server database and log file fragmentation can have a negative affect on SQL Server’s performance, don’t forget that there are other files that SQL Server accesses, such as the SQL Server executables, and if you are using Full-Text Indexing, the full-text index files. So not only do you want to defrag SQL Server database and log files, but all files located on your SQL Server.

Experience Diskeeper continued from page 3 Keeping Your SQL Server Databases

Defragmented with Diskeeperby Howard Butler Sr., Systems Engineer and Michael Materie, Diskeeper Product Manager

Average increase in productivity from automatically defragging servers and workstations with Diskeeper

Decrease in administrative overhead from automatically defragging servers and workstations

continued on next page

Customers are taking advantage of our special enterprise licensing program called the Diskeeper Corporation Premier Customer Program.

Find out how to join the growing list of companies that are putting Diskeeper Corporation software on every system at their site!

Call to see if you qualify for special volume license pricing and incentives, as well as award-winning personal tech support. Speak to your corporate account representative, or have your preferred reseller contact us.

Call 800-829-6468 code 9237 or email us at [email protected] for more information.

Premier Treatment for Our Valued Customers

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76

The Diskeeper Corporation Maintenance Agreement—ProTeCTion for your VoluMe liCense inVesTMenT

All file movement in a Diskeeper defragmentation job is handled by the operating system itself. In fact, the code in the operating system, which was originally co-written by Diskeeper Corporation, prioritizes safety in determining what can be defragmented and what cannot. SQL Servers databases (e.g. .LDF, .MDF) are perfectly safe to defragment. As Diskeeper sends requests to the operating system (through an API) to move files, if it comes across files that cannot be safely moved, they are simply skipped over without any error or concern.

Figure 1.0 - Screenshot of Diskeeper Analysis.

So how do you find out if the files on your SQL Server are frag-mented? Fortunately, this is easy. As part of Diskeeper’s func-tionality, you can run a fragmentation analysis to see just how fragmented your SQL Server files are. As with defragmentation, this can be done while SQL is running.

As you can imagine, it is hard to recommend a specific time frame during which to run file defragmentation, as each data-base is different and fragmentation occurs at different rates. A dynamic Diskeeper feature defragments on-the¬fly using proprietary technology called InvisiTasking. Diskeeper will only defragment files or free space if it is needed, and with InvisiTasking, it guarantees that defragmentation operates invisibly, with zero resource impact to SQL Server and other running applications. And yes, you can still restrict Diskeeper’s runtimes if you so choose.

Many professional database administrators first evaluated Diskeeper after experiencing issues they determined stemmed from heavily fragmented disks. They went on to become loyal customers.

It typically starts out that something slows to a crawl. As they investigate they use systems management and monitoring tools to narrow down the source of the issue. This is especially true on SQL servers, where split seconds can add up to thousands of dollars of lost revenue.

Figure 1.1 – Screenshot of Diskeeper with runtime selection and resource usage display.

Numerous technical articles delve into specifics to help diagnose this situation. One such paper on SQL Server is Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005. In the section I/O Bottlenecks, it describes a number of counters to look for that can help pin point the source of the poor performance.

Per the Microsoft article, the following is a gauge of what Average Disk Sec/Read:

Less than 10ms = very good Between 10–20ms = okay Between 20–50ms = slow, needs attention Greater than 50ms = serious I/O bottleneck

Figure 1.2 – Line item from PerfMon.exe Text Report.

Reported cases [to Diskeeper Corporation] from SQL DBA’s have shown Average Disk Sec/Read to be exceptionally high on their servers, including delays of 200ms and 300ms, well into the serious I/O bottleneck part of the scale.

As expected, the article provides possible solutions to address I/O bottlenecks. However, one solution not explicitly mentioned is file defragmentation. Defragmentation alone has shown to reduce Average Disk Sec/Read from the 200-300ms range back to around 15 and 30ms, a tremendous improvement in performance!

It isn’t uncommon for defragmentation to be left off a list of solutions, as it is still unknown to many. Recommendations to increase I/O bandwidth, such as adding more disks, are indicators that you need to investigate file fragmentation as a possible cause. Example: your SAN vendor tells you to add another controller or array. If there is substantial fragmentation, Diskeeper will typically provide better results, as it actually fixes the issue rather than camouflaging it.

SQL Server Databases continued from page 5

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Would you like to always have the most current version of your software at the best possible price—even at a savings of up to 50%*?

Diskeeper Corporation Maintenance Programs are available for volume license products (Diskeeper and Undelete).

With a 1- or 2-year Diskeeper maintenance agree-ment, you’re guaranteed to get new versions of Diskeeper at no additional cost. Purchasing mainte-nance for your volume license gives you a dramatic cost savings of up to 50% compared to an upgrade purchase. Maintenance can pay for itself with only one upgrade!

Maintenance Program Benefits:Free updates and upgrades provided automatically.

Cost Savings: our 1- or 2-year maintenance pro-gram is up to 50% less than the cost for buying upgrades.

Easy Budget Management: our renewable mainte-nance programs make it easy to budget for future expenses. Furthermore, no additional costs are incurred for upgrades as they are covered under the maintenance program.

Convenient Website Downloads: quick and easy access to downloading updates from our site.

Efficiency: have the latest and greatest versions of the software, which always includes the new est features and enhancements.

With a maintenance agreement on your volume license software, you will be among the first to auto-matically receive your free upgrade to your product during the agreement period. This way, you always stay up-to-date on your software, have the newest technology available and enjoy the benefits.

A maintenance agreement also provides the advan-tage of being able to budget your software costs for the next 1-2 years (depending on contract length).

If you have any questions regarding the Diskeeper Corporation Maintenance Program, please contact your favorite reseller or a Diskeeper Corporation sales representative at 800-829-6468 code 9238.

Haven’t tried new Diskeeper 2009 yet? Download it now! www.diskeeper.com/newsk32

* savings depends on product purchased and volume license level of software.

continued on page 9

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Does Fragmentation Affect Workstations and Laptops?I sometimes find a system administrator who feels some workstations or laptops at his site are unaffected by fragmen-tation. It could be the site stores user files on its servers or that some workstations are less used or “less critical” than others and don’t need defragmentation. When one looks closely, though, one can see fragmentation impacting perfor-mance on these systems.

The computer I am using right now has Windows® installed and the programs I use. The data files are all on server drives which I map to. This still leaves program logs, Windows files, My Documents, and Internet files to fragment on my boot

drive. I have Diskeeper automatically running, and in the last week, it has eliminated 3,687 fragments. That is over 700 fragments on each of five working days.

I had a second machine which I did not defragment for four weeks. I just defragmented it, cleaning up some 18,400 frag-ments, or just under 1,000 fragments per working day.

Diskeeper automatically determines the optimum defragmen-tation schedule for each system. This allows Diskeeper to clean up fragmentation before it impacts performance.

You can set up Diskeeper on a few of your own computers, and you will see similar results. Just wait a week and open

the Historical Report tab in Diskeeper. Your count may be higher or lower than my tests revealed, but I am sure it will be far more than you expected. What is causing all of this fragmentation?

Fragmentation on Workstations and LaptopsWhen Windows boots up, a bitmap of free spaces is created. It stores up to the neighborhood of 9,000 free space segments. When data is to be written to the disk, a very limited attempt is made to properly allocate an appropriate free space segment; however, due to technical circumstances most files still end up fragmented. Expanding files (more data added to an existing file rather than rewriting the entire updated file) have an even

slimmer possibility of not fragmenting. Only by about the same amount of luck it takes to win the lottery would that expand-ing file not fragment.

Windows keeps several log files. Each of these grows, fragmenting often, because there is no contiguous free space allocated for the log files to grow into. Windows keeps updating the Registry, so the Registry files, such as software.log, grow larger and frag-ment. Every time you install a patch or hotfix to Windows, you create fragmenta-tion. The new system files are written to the disk, and some or all of the old ones (depending on your system settings) are deleted. Each deleted file is likely to leave a small free space.

Programs installed to workstations and laptops also frag-ment, and many applications produce their own log files, also on the boot drive, and fragment just as the Windows log files fragment.

If the user does any Internet access, there will be a great many temporary Internet files, mostly small, mostly short-term, which serve to chop up the free space and make more perma-nent files fragment severely.

Here is a partial list of files that are degraded by fragmentation on typical corporate client machines (where ‘user’ documents are stored on a company server):

• User Profiles

• System maintenance and logging files

• Advanced system features, including:

n System Restore

n Prefetching

n PC Health

• Registry

• Internet browsing

• System updates/upgrades:

n Service packs

n Hot fixes

• Application updates/upgrades including:

n Anti-virus definition files

n Network management software (e.g., SMS)

• Systems/applications never defragmented or recently updated may have fragmented executables

• Print spools

• Paging file

• Hibernation file

• Metadata (MFT, et al.)

• Directories

• USN Journal

And, above and beyond all of that, users may be storing files of their own locally, including pictures, music, and joke videos. These are all large files, and will fragment and create more holes in the free space.

With the increasing prevalence of WiFi networks, laptops are superseding desktops as the typical workstation. The trans-portability of laptops increases the likelihood that files will (or must) be stored locally.

Lost Performance, Lost ProductivityAll workstations and laptops fragment, and this fragmentation causes performance and reliability problems. My computer, as stated above, racked up an average of 700 file fragments per day in one week. Without automatic defragmentation, these fragments accumulate. The cumulative effect is lost performance, reliability and, as a result, lost productivity of the employees using the fragmented systems.

Fragmentation impacts every workstation and laptop at every site. Keep your systems at top performance, and your employ-ees at top productivity, by daily automatic defragmentation with Diskeeper.

Call your favorite reseller, or your Diskeeper Corporation Account Representative today for a site-wide quote on Diskeeper—800-829-6468 code 9239.

How Fragmentation Impacts Every Workstation at Every Site

I had a second machine which I did not defragment for four weeks. I just defrag mented it, cleaning up some 18,400 fragments, or just under 1,000 fragments per working day.

Site-WideSucceSSwith Diskeeper“ Normally, we would be lucky to be able to defragment every system in the building once a month. Now that we have Diskeeper, we can meet a definite performance metric and since we are ISO certified that is a very good thing. The best part is the recovery of all the man hours spent trying to defrag-ment systems can now be spent on other projects. Booyah!”

— Brian G. Dunfee, Network Administrator, United Service Source Inc.

Have a success story you would like to share? Let us know! Email [email protected]

Figure 1.3 – PerfMon.exe Graph Report usage display.

In summary a file defragmentation utility like Diskeeper can take care of the external disk fragmentation, while a SQL Server utility like DBCC REINDEX can address internal SQL Server disk fragmentation. As a team, they can work together to help ensure the optimum performance of your SQL Servers.

If there is any doubt, simply install Diskeeper and use its analy-sis function to find out exactly how many individual pieces your files are broken into. You’re likely to be very surprised. It’s quite common to see analysis reports with database files fragmented in hundreds of thousands of pieces! Re-printed with permission from SQL-Server-Performance.com © 2000 – 2009 SQL-Server-Performance.com All Rights Reserved.

SQL Server Databases continued from page 6

F r o m o u r t e C h s u p p o r t s t A F F

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T here are two types of volume-centric fragmentation with which Diskeeper is immediately con-

cerned: file fragmentation and free space fragmentation. File fragmenta-tion concerns computer files that are not contiguous, but rather are broken into scattered parts. Free space frag-mentation describes a condition in which unused space on a disk is scat-tered into many small parts rather than a small number of larger spaces. File fragmentation causes problems with accessing data stored in computer files, while free space fragmentation causes problems creating new data files or extending (adding to) old ones.

Taken together, the two types of frag-mentation are commonly referred to as “disk” or “volume” fragmentation. It is important to note that, when talk-ing about fragmentation, we are talk-ing about the file as a container for data and not about the contents (data) of the file itself.

Typically email application databases such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino are made up of a large con-tainer file that is pre-allocated in size at the point of creation. As the database increases beyond the initial assess-ment the file becomes fragmented.

People sometimes describe fragmen-tation as a condition in which a file has its records (internal contents) scattered about within the file, sepa-rated by numerous small gaps. This type of fragmentation may be a prob-lem with the application which main-tains the file; it is not inherent in the operating system or file structure.

Over a period of time, any popular email application server will experi-ence this “internal” fragmentation of its database. This is where records are removed, but the space it occu-pied within the database is still there and is either reused for a new record or is skipped over.

Let’s say you have 250,000 records represented in an email server data-base. If an individual record (e.g., a deleted email) is removed, the loca-tion is simply marked as deleted. In the course of doing business, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of records are added and deleted. It doesn’t take long for the internal organization of a database file, its indexes, and other related files to quickly become quite disorganized. The speed of locating a particular record or segment of information is directly related to the amount time

spent skipping over these holes or internal fragments.

It is important to state that Diskeeper does not, under any circumstances, restructure or alter the internal con-tents of any file. After Diskeeper defragments a file, it will be a bit-for-bit duplicate of the original. Altering or restructuring a file is a very dangerous thing to do as one would have to have a very intimate knowledge of a given file structure and be able to detect changes as the various databases evolved with new releases. Therefore any holes or “records marked as deleted” within the database prior to defragmentation are still present.

The tools for Microsoft Exchange (ESE and EDB Utilities) deal with this internal record fragmentation by rearranging the internal records/indexes on the fly when possible, and at times requiring a whole new copy of the database to be created and each record copied to the new file. Even if this copy is done to a freshly formatted volume or a defrag-mented volume with a free space chunk large enough to contain the entire database, it’s quite likely that this new copy will become fragmented. It is strongly recommended to run Diskeeper after performing email main-tenance that rewrites the database. Otherwise, it is possible to actually worsen mail server performance due to additional required disk I/O.

The benefit of defragmenting an email server environment is no different than defragmenting any other sys-tem. It simply takes less time and system resources to access a con-tiguous file than one broken into many individual pieces. This improves not only response time but also reliability of the system. Thorough database maintenance requires a combination of Diskeeper (disk defragmentation) and the email server utilities (inter-nal record/index defragmentation) to achieve optimum performance and response time.

Haven’t tried new Diskeeper 2009 yet? Download it now! www.diskeeper.com/newsk34

Diskeeper Email ServersDiskeeper works safely and effectively with email servers, whether they are Microsoft® Exchange, Lotus® Domino®, QUALCOMM® Eudora®, or others. Diskeeper is uniquely designed to run in the background while these applications are operational and available to users. There is no need to stop or shut down these applications or services to defragment.

When we started working on Diskeeper 2009, one of our major design goals was to increase the efficiency of large disk defrag beyond anything previously possible.With workstation and consumer disk sizes now approaching 1 TB and with multi-terabyte disks being common in server environments, innovation was imperative.

The sheer volume of the data we are dealing with presents a considerable challenge for a disk defragmenter. For example, at 25 MB/sec data throughput rate (respectable and sustainable for most laptops today), it would take over 11 hours to move 1 TB of data. This, of course, assumes perfect uti-lization of the bandwidth and noth-ing else happening on the system at the same time. While data transfer rates in server environments can be several times faster, the amount of disk storage data can also be much higher than 1 TB.

Presented with this chal-lenge, our engineers realized defragmenting very large disk volumes required a different approach to moving data from what we used for smaller disks.

Taking a closer look, we determined that sig-nificant portions of files were fragmented in a way that did not cause performance degradation. At the same time, the same files may have other parts that are badly fragmented in a way that significantly impacts file access time. We realized that we can do some truly innovative things by performing “targeted” defragmenta-tion, which eliminates the fragmentation causing file access performance degradation, while at the same time minimizing the amount of data that needs to be moved on the disk.

It is from this that the Titan Defrag Engine was born. The pri-mary innovation in the ‘Titan engine’, as we like to call it for short, is that by targeting performance-impacting fragmenta-tion we were able to dramatically reduce the amount of effort needed to restore the system to its original performance. Using special analysis techniques, the Titan engine examines each file and determines which parts of the file (if any) require

defragmentation to restore the file to the optimal performance state. The main source of performance degradation due to fragmentation is the seek time required to move the read/write head from one area of the disk to another to read different parts of the same file.

We were able to come up with an algorithm that determines which frag-

ments need to be elimi-nated for maximum file access performance. So

the main difference between Titan and traditional defrag-

mentation engines is that in very large file scenarios, Titan

avoids working on certain large file fragments that would provide

no additional performance gain.

The innovative technology devel-oped enables Titan to determine

which fragments affect perfor-mance and work only on those.

Another innovation is how Titan achieves free space consolidation.

Although Titan is very effective in consolidating free space, it does it

only when it is neces-sary and avoids moving large amounts of data that will not improve performance. The Titan free space consolidation algorithm takes advan-tage of the fact that it is much more likely to find a reasonable amount of free space on extremely large volumes. For exam-

ple, if a 10 TB volume only has 5% free space left, it is still 500 GB of storage space.

The mission of the Titan engine is to allow large servers with volumes containing millions of files to run at top speed without incurring fragmentation-related problems and without having to be taken off line to defrag. To this end, Titan is a resounding success.

F r o m o u r D e v e l o p e r s

The Story Behind

TheTitanDefrag Engine

Written by George Dzieciol, Diskeeper Corporation Senior Technical Manager

George Dzieciol holds a Master’s in Computer Science from the Warsaw Technical University in Warsaw, Poland and has over 20 years of experience in software development. Prior to joining Diskeeper in 2008 George spent over 12 years with Symantec Corporation managing engineering for the corporate AntiVirus product.




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W i n D o W s i t p r o W h it e pA pe r

The ImpacTof Disk Fragmentation on Servers

File Copy Test – up to 45% fasterThe basic task of moving data from one location to another on the server shows that a fragmented disk has a major negative impact on the file copy. Defragmented disks are a significant time saver for common user tasks.

Fragmentation Level Seconds

Low – Fragmented 44

Low – Defragmented 39

Medium – Fragmented 72

Medium – Defragmented 60

High – Fragmented 97

High – Defragmented 54

Document Open Test – up to 30% fasterTo prevent this type of file fragmentation, the best methodol-ogy is an ongoing background file defragmentation process, the benefits of which are clearly demonstrated by this test. And given how often this type of task is performed in most business environments, the value of the defragmentation cannot be understated.


Low – Fragmented 11.7


Medium – Fragmented 12.7

Medium – Defragmented 10.7

High – Fragmented 14.7

High – Defragmented 10.3

Backup Test – 17% reduction in timeReducing or eliminating disk fragmentation prior to backup will allow larger amounts of data to be backed up, especially if time is a constraint in your backup process.








Anti-Virus Scan Test – 10% performance improvementThe fragmentation level of the disk has a direct impact on the length of the AV scan process. Disk defragmentation resulted in upwards of a 10 percent performance improvement.








From the report: “Every application that touches the hard drive will benefit from a good tool that defragments and manages the files on your servers.” And now here’s the proof! Through a series of precise performance test results, you’ll discover the surprising difference defragmentation makes in key areas of server operation such as time to copy a file, open a document, backup and AV scan. Get the inside data on how fragmentation affects SQL and Exchange operations. It’s absolutely vital data for all IT staff.

Common Server Task Tests

ExCHAngE TESTS

Opening Messages Test – 40% performance improvementWhile the impact of server fragmentation gets significantly greater as the disk becomes more fragmented, even the common lower levels of fragmentation will have a large impact on user response time when you consider that hundreds of users may be accessing the data store at the same time.








Moving Folder Contents Test – 50% fasterIf users are often found reorganizing the data in the Exchange mailbox, the impact of fragmentation can be quite severe.








SQL TESTS

SQL Server Bulk Test – 40% improvementA highly fragmented database structure can have a severe negative impact on loading and extracting data from server applications, with the test showing a performance improvement of 40 percent in the most heavily fragmented environment.



Low – Defragmented 20.9





Table Key Creation Test – 11% improvementSQL Server 2008 does a very good job of managing its data-bases, but defragmentation shows appreciable improvement in the performance of tasks.








SQL Queries Test – approximately 18% improvementThe test shows running simple SQL queries can be drastically slowed down when fragmentation exists.



Low – Defragmented 22.3





Server Application Tests

“The single, consistent result that appears in all of our tests

is that defragmented server drives using Diskeeper deliver better performance.”

Read the full Windows IT Pro White Paper at:www.diskeeper.com/serverimpact

http://www.diskeeper.com/serverimpact

14 15

KSPS Television, with over 35,000 viewers, is the flagship Inland Pacific Northwest PBS station.

The TrialIn 2000, during the evaluation of Diskeeper on Windows® 98, the KSPS staff were outraged when the trialware expired and they no longer were able to defrag their PCs automatically. Their hard drives slowed down and they learned the hard way how fragmented drives cause work slowdowns.

The OutcomeThe daunting task of combining video devices with network connectivity has been a learning experience for the tele-vision industry. To integrate computer operations and 24/7 maintenance, KSPS turned to Diskeeper for the ON-AIR com-puters and all employee desktops as well.

“Your viewer at home doesn’t care if you need to do Windows updates on your SQL Server, or if you need to defrag and reboot your fileserver. They simply want their TV show on the air 24/7 with no excuses,” Martin emphasized. “Diskeeper keeps your hard drives in the best possible shape for those critical times. Everyone should adopt a maintenance plan for their

computers, starting with Diskeeper as the core tool.”

Martin added “I completely rely on Diskeeper and recommend it to everyone who asks me what they should do to clean up their PC and maintain performance. The InvisiTasking technology helps to defrag in the background. I expect a lack of help desk calls complaining that the defrag program is causing slowdowns.”

KSPS uses Diskeeper on the Web and Mail Servers, SQL Server and a Fundraising Server. Since they are a PBS Station almost 80% of the funding comes through public donation. The station relies on Diskeeper to maintain their most critical servers from the SQL Server Database computer to the Cash Register Server for the fundraising database. Martin noted, “We no longer require active downtime to perform defrag routines. Our servers are kept at top performance.”

The Diskeeper EnterpriseServer has the incredible task of defragging their Nearline Storage RAID5 for the ON-AIR Server. This powerful server has 48 hard disk drives striped in a RAID5 configura-tion, comprising a sizable 37.2 TB vol-ume. This Nearline Storage drive holds high definition and standard definition clips which air at a later date than what is currently stored in their ON-AIR Server.

KSPS’s ON-AIR Server is quickly filled with files ranging in size from a few hun-dred megabytes up to 20 gigabytes per

file. Therefore they have to use alterna-tive Nearline Storage and keeping the Nearline RAID defragged is very important. Without help from the truly robust Titan Defrag Engine technology in Diskeeper EnterpriseServer, the files couldn’t be eas-ily fitted into consecutive storage spaces.

Conclusion“I am now able to keep our computers working in tip-top shape without devoting time for manual defrag maintenance.

If I were asked what things I would change or add to improve computer functionality they would be:

1) Buy Diskeeper for your computer. 2) Add more system memory.

If you simply do the two items listed above, you will regain the vigor and speed your older computers used to have when they were new. The benefits of well-maintained hard drives outweigh the small cost associated with the purchase of Diskeeper licenses.”

Glen Martin, KSPS Television Engineering/IT Department IT Administrator

“Your viewer at home doesn’t care if you need to do Windows updates

on your SQL Server, or if you need to defrag

and reboot your Fileserver. They simply want their

TV show on the air 24/7 with no excuses.”

“Leaving a PC turned on overnight for a defragmentation scan is no longer necessary, saving electricity, and PC wear and tear.”

C A s e s t u D y

No Downtime for KSPS Public Television“The Diskeeper Server edition is a necessity in my company’s business. We cannot afford downtime for any of our servers. We must stay on the air 24 hours a day so we rely on Diskeeper to keep our servers running at top speed, maintaining reliability,” said Glen Martin, the KSPS IT Administrator.

Put Diskeeper on every laptop, workstation and server on your network.

Get a quote at www.diskeeper.com/topup

Saving Time, Money and Manpower:

12 reasons Diskeeper is an essential part of your network infrastructure.

Continue getting cutting-edge Diskeeper upgrades automaticallyIt’s a fact: just one upgrade during your contract period will save you more than your total maintenance license cost. Our customers continue to maintain peak performance and reliability on their networks—despite the challenges of a rapidly changing IT field.

Why Diskeeper Maintenance?

4 Stay current with the latest system performance technology.

4 Automatically save up to 50% on the cost of a full software upgrade during your contract period.

4 Get immediate downloads of new Diskeeper builds as they’re released.

4 Maintenance licenses are 100% transferrable should you upgrade your machines or operating systems.

Call your favorite reseller today to let them know you need to renew; your reseller will have the best pricing available.

You may also contact us directly at (800) 829-6468 x1228 or [email protected].

1All laptops, workstations and serv-ers suffer losses in performance

and reliability from fragmentation. Only Diskeeper has the power and technical sophistication to eliminate this issue without additional effort from the sys-tem administrator.

2Diskeeper’s return on investment is realized in a matter of weeks, not

months or years.

3Diskeeper allows a company to do more with less, by increasing the

efficiency of existing staff/equipment. The result is a leaner company that is able to produce greater work output.

4Unlike solutions that require ongo-ing management and maintenance,

Diskeeper operates in real time without resource conflicts, eliminating the need for scheduling or administrative atten-tion. It keeps servers, workstations and laptops at peak production levels 24/7.

5Diskeeper boosts system speed 20% or more while simultaneously ensur-

ing top system reliability. Get faster appli-cation load times, database searches, web apps, virus scans, backups and other time intensive procedures.

6 In a virtual system platform, the weak link is the disk drive. It is

required to serve multiple operating systems, resulting in an exponential increase in file fragmentation. Without Diskeeper, the entire platform can even-tually come to a halt.

7Diskeeper extends system hardware life an additional 1 to 3 years. Save

on both refresh costs and installation.

8 Diskeeper reduces energy costs with a savings of .12 kilowatts per

hour on each desktop system. For a large company that represents a consid-erable amount of money. As the excess use of power is proportionate to the degree of fragmentation, and servers typically have even more severe frag-mentation, the wasted energy costs are even greater.

9Diskeeper increases server uptime and efficiency and unlocks the full

performance value of the server by elimi-nating in real time any accumulation of fragmentation without causing resource conflicts.

10Diskeeper prevents potentially expensive data loss due to high

amounts of fragmentation, especially in critical operations such as backups. One significant unrecoverable data loss event can put a company out of busi-ness. Diskeeper can significantly speed up backup time and reduce the chance of error.

11Diskeeper has been proven repeat-edly to reduce Help Desk calls

(15% and more) by increasing the overall reliability and better-than-new-speed of systems across the network.

12Built-in or fixed schedule-based defragmentation solutions cost a

company far more in incomplete defrag than Diskeeper costs to cover a network. Only Diskeeper provides the full range of “Set It and Forget It®” technologies that comprehensively address system perfor-mance and reliability.

http://www.diskeeper.com/topup



mailto:MBerger%40diskeeper.com?subject=I%27d%20like%20to%20renew%20my%20Diskeeper%20Maintenance



“ Since first installing Diskeeper I have seen blinding speed and far less hang-ups with

Windows, which is a tremendous improvement.

“The trialware expired and within three days my PC was grinding to a halt and hanging on

a regular basis. The standard defrag product with Windows made little improvement and

took a long time to run. After the Diskeeper product was registered properly it found over

13,000 fragments and brought my dragging PC back to full brilliancy!

NO NOTICEABLE RESOURCES CONSUMED!

“I can run all of the servers at once without ANY issues,

but if I stop Diskeeper with InvisiTasking, even for

a very short time, it really slows down in a hurry.

“I wouldn’t have a client machine

or a Windows based server

without Diskeeper on it. PERIOD.

James Moore, Operations and MaintenanceBoeing, #28 Fortune 100 List

©2009 Diskeeper Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Diskeeper Corporation logo; Executive Software; Innovators in Performance and Reliability Technologies; Diskeeper; Real-time defragmentation, zero overhead; Undelete; Real-Time Protection. Real-Time Recovery.; InvisiTasking; HyperFast; V-locity; Titan Defrag Engine; “Set It and Forget It”; and I-FAAST are trademarks and/or registered trademarks owned by Diskeeper Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks and brand names are the property of their respective owners.

7590 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank, California 91504 USA

1-800-829-6468 • www.diskeeper.com

Get Diskeeper-driven performance on every

laptop, workstation, and server on your network.• Manually identifying needy systems

is inaccurate and time consuming

• Get the best volume license discount level

• Eliminates “weakest link” workflow performance hang ups

• Greatly reduces Help Desk issues

• Lowers maintenance costs

• Extends life expectancy of all systems an additional 1–3 years

Top up your Diskeeper site licenses now! Get a Quote at www.diskeeper.com/topup

C u s t o m e r s u C C e s s

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