PerfectDisk Blog from Raxco.com| Defrag Software

Interop: consolidate; but get the performance management right

                            

Writing in the Information Week Analytics Blog, Art Whittmann writes this week about a panel discussion on the future of the data center at this week's Interop show in Las Vegas. The panel consisted of leaders from Cisco, Brocade, Juniper and Riverbed, and Art points out that they all agreed on an overlying message -- now is the time to be consolidating servers, networking, storage and even data centers. With the result "a highly responsive environment that takes far fewer resources to manage."

Art then gets into the management aspect of the virtualized data center, and asks if the right vendors ("the usual suspects") are the right ones to handle this new virtualized world. Of course, at Raxco we're often pointing out that one aspect of management that sometimes gets overlooked is defragmentation. And virtualization defragmentation is just as important as physical defrag. Actually, for businesses placing more and more emphasis on virtual solutions such as ESX and Hyper-V, it could be argued that it is even more important than ever. Which is why we have virtual aware defrag solutions with PerfectDisk. The old school defraggers won't cut it in this new world.

Consolidate. Go virtual. And keep on defragmenting to get performance right.

                           

Automatic defrag will crush your virtual performance -- unless....

                                                

If there's one thing worse than the ol' "bait and switch," it's a "bait and cover-up." Or put another way, the devil is in the details.                                               

So from "the other guys" we get the following:

                         

• "at the root of virtual machine performance problems is file fragmentation." Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Do we think that fragmentation is the cause of many performance problems? Of course. But we're not going to sit here and tell you there are no other performance considerations in a virtual environment, just as we wouldn't say that for physical environments.

• "the only real solution to optimizing virtual machine performance and reliability is a fully automatic defragmenter, one that is constantly taking care of the fragmentation problem." Well. Besides the caveat from above, I would alter it to the following: "the only viable defragmentation solution to optimizing virtual machine performance and reliability is a fully automatic defragmenter that is virtually aware. Without virtual awareness, your defragmenter will very likely do more harm than good."

                                   

Here's the deal. As Erwin Solis clearly demonstrated in our recent Webinar on defragmentation in a virtualization environment (ESX, Hyper-V, etc.), automatic defragmentation without virtual awareness is a road to performance problems. Solutions like VMware's vMotion address resource contention at the virtualized machine level. PerfectDisk 10 Server Virtual Edition addresses it at the virtualized software level. There are finite resources to go around. Treating a virtual machine like a physical machine in this environment, with the goal being to try to solve fragmentation and performance problems, is going down the wrong path.

                         

With the PerfectDisk solution, you not only eliminate resource contention, but increase the resources available for your busy virtual machines. Without that awareness, the idle machines are basically stealing resources needed by busy guests, defeating the purpose of what you were trying to accomplish and very likely causing new performance problems. Not smart.

In Erwin's example, he shows a fairly loaded hypervisor with a couple of servers -- one busy and one not. The results without virtual awareness? Not pretty. Or as Erwin puts it, "it's like a man trapped inside a room with no doors; the room looks large, but he doesn't see the reality - he's trapped in his box."

                      

To see and listen to the 30-minute webinar, Defragmentation in a Virtual Environment," go here.

Automatic defragmentation without virtualization is a fool's errand. Test yourself and see.

Get out of the box and see your whole world -- virtual and physical.

                                    

Related Post:

Virtualization defrag for the future

Webinar Tuesday -- Defragmentation in a Virtual Environment

                            

It's the third and final installment of our 3-part Webinar series -- Defragmentation in a Virtual Environment. You'll get to see our Virtual Aware defrag in action and see why it matters.You'll see why we say that without it, the potential for performance hits in a virtual environment are significant. If you're running VMware ESX, vMotion, Hyper-V, or any Windows-based host, you'll want to check out this 30-minute presentation. Exchange in a virtual environment is also covered, along with VMware Workstation and VMware Server. Senior technical engineer Erwin Solis presents, with our 5-time Microsoft MVP Greg Hayes handling the interactive questions and answers.

Tuesday, May 5th, 12:00 p.m. EDT, 9:00 a.m. PDT, dinner time in Europe, breakfast time in Australia. Register here. 

                   

Webinar -- Managing PerfectDisk 10 in the Enterprise

 

We're holding a free Webinar on Tuesday, April 21st at 12:00 p.m. noon EDT (9:00 a.m. PDT). The Webinar, Managing PerfectDisk 10 in the Enterprise, will cover:

• what's new in the PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console
• setup, deployment and management of PerfectDisk 10 clients

• patent-pending Virtual Awareness for boosting performance of virtualization environments, including VMware ESX. Microsoft's Hyper-V and other Windows-based hosts.

The webinar is only about a half-hour but still provides some excellent hands-on tips that you will be able to put into use. For existing business customers who have not yet deployed PerfectDisk 10, it's a great opportunity to see what's new, particularly those in or moving to virtualization environments. And for new customers or those considering PerfectDisk, it's a good opportunity to spend a little time and learn a lot.

The Webinar will be given by senior technical support engineer Erwin Solis and moderated by Greg Hayes, manager of technical solutions at Raxco Software.

You can register here.

Virtualization defrag for the future -- here today -- Go

                            

The future of virtualization defragmentation arrives today, with the general availability of the world's first and only virtually-aware disk defragmentation utility. The PerfectDisk 10 Virtual Enterprise Edition is now generally available. This newest member of the PerfectDisk family contains patent-pending Virtual Awareness that eliminates resource contention to maintain optimal performance on physical hosts. And it is platform independent on VMware ESX Server and Windows-based physical hosts such as Microsoft's Hyper-V.

                         

Since the Release Candidate of the Virtual Enterprise Edition was made available about a month ago, interest from businesses and agencies has really taken off. What's the big deal? What the competition offers is defragmentation that is always on, always going....but unaware of its environment. So a common scenario in that environment is a virtual machine, or 2, or several, that kick off defragmentation because they are "idle." The problem is that these "idle" guests start going to work and consuming resources. but they don't take into account that another guest under the same physical host may not be idle - and in fact may need to carry out important work. But it's impeded by the "idle" guests that are cranking away, consuming resources at the expense of a critical machine that needs to do other work. 

                     

Enter the PerfectDisk 10 Virtual Enterprise Edition. It's the next generation of intelligence, which not only concerns itself with the resource availability of individual machines, but of their physical hosts as well. Plus all the other extras with PerfectDisk 10, like space management reports, patented optimization, space restoration technology, etc.

                     Also available today is the new PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console (formerly the Command Center). The PD 10 console brings new virtualization reporting as well as other new reports and reporting enhancements. Plus - new integration with VMware Virtual Infrastructure Management. This new plug-in allows user to access the PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console directly from within the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client, providing a single point of management for their ESX-based/vCenter managed Windows guests.

                          

And the console also has new integration with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. The SCOM 2007 management pack allows users to access PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console fragmentation statistics - including alerts and warnings - directly from within the SCOM 2007 console, providing a single point of management for their managed Windows environment. Using the PerfectDisk Enterprise Console SCOM 2007 management pack, users can drill down to the drive level to view fragmentation levels, view an aggregate summary of alerts and warnings, connect to PerfectDisk running on a managed computer, and even directly launch the Enterprise Console to deploy, configure and schedule PerfectDisk on their managed computers. And finally, the PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console now includes SQL Server 2005 Express Edition for improved performance and scalability.

Virtualization defragmentation with VMware ESX Server, Microsoft's Hyper-V, and more. Total enterprise management of defragmentation.

                  

Now.

Virtualization Buyers Guide Now Online -- defrag included

                          

Redmond Magazine has a sister publication called the Virtualization Review. Last November, it published its first annual Virtualization Buyer's Guide, covering all kinds of products and topics in the virtualization space. It's a good source whether you're looking at applications, desktop or server virtualization products,power and cooling issues, and a lot more. The management and optimization category covers virtualization defrag and more. I'm calling your attention to it now because the guide is now online, and it can be downloaded at the Virtualization Review's website here.

We're happy that PerfectDisk is the lone defrag solution in the guide, with specific solutions for  virtualization defrag. Because of the timing of the Buyers Guide and the launch of PerfectDisk 10, the new PerfectDisk 10 Virtual Edition, with its exclusive virtual awareness for environments like VMware ESX Server and Microsoft's Hyper-V, is not listed. But PerfectDisk for VMware is, along with our previous ESX defrag solution.  

                         

Wherever you are in your virtualization project -- just getting going or knee deep into it, I would recommend checking out this guide to help you in your product selections.

PerfectDisk ready for Hyper-V launch next week, defragmenting Hyper-V systems today

Microsoft will launch Hyper-V and expand on its virtualization strategy in Bellevue, Washington on September 8th. And while this may be another instance of Microsoft not being the first to a big party (think Internet, think search, think lots of things), this is another one where they want to attend in a big way. They want to be a part of virtualization that extends from the data center to the desktop, and in another move we've seen before, are shaking the market up, starting with pricing. It's already caused changes, starting with industry leader VMware's pricing, strategy and CEO change.

                     

PerfectDisk 2008 Server, which was certified by Microsoft for Windows Server 2008 upon PerfectDisk's launch at the beginning of this year, has been running on Hyper-V since that time. At the time, Windows Server 2008 certification did not include Hyper-V (Chapter 6, if you're keeping score). So while that certification is a formality, we are in the process of receiving that certification now. 

Hyper-V certification requirements are pretty basic. They include:

• Recovery after Save state and Start of the virtual machine
• Recovery after a Pause and Resume of the virtual machine
• Do not prevent shutdown
• Recovery after a Snapshot is taken and applied.

So basically, a Hyper-V certified application has to be installed in the Guest OS and adhere to the above list, which PerfectDisk does. This Hyper-V chapter now goes along with all the rest of the Windows Server 2008 certification requirements. PerfectDisk's official certification for Hyper-V will occur shortly.

Here's a screen shot of a perfectly defragmented Hyper-V system from our labs here: 

 

We'll let Microsoft and VMware battle it out for virtualization supremacy, along with all the other players vying for a piece of the action.

              

And PerfectDisk, with its family of products that includes PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware and the PerfectDIsk 2008 for VMware ESX Bundle, will defragment them all - hosts and guests.

Ready, able...and performing today.