Condusiv Technologies, the leader in I/O reduction software for virtual and physical server environments, today announced the release of Diskeeper 15 Server,
highlighting an industry-first fragmentation prevention solution for
SAN storage systems connected to physical servers to keep both servers
and storage running like new.
"Even
with over 45 million Diskeeper licenses sold, Condusiv is not sitting
still in regard to addressing performance-robbing fragmentation wherever
it appears in the data center. Performance-robbing file fragmentation
affects SAN storage equally as much as it affects server local storage
or direct-attached storage. As much as Condusiv offers a robust software
solution to accelerate virtual environments, the fact remains that some
of the most mission-critical applications still run on physical
servers. That's not a small number considering there are over five
million physical servers in production across North America and EMEA," said Brian Morin, SVP, Global Marketing, Condusiv Technologies.
While
modern RAID controllers do a good job of managing data at the physical
disk layer, which certainly helps in the fight against file
fragmentation, it falls short in that it does nothing about
fragmentation at the logical software layer that Windows sees. This is
the primary reason SAN storage performance degrades over time.
"There
is a misconception among storage administrators that their SAN storage
device is eradicating fragmentation for them because they aren't
familiar with fragmentation at the logical disk layer outside the SAN.
While SAN technologies certainly help at the physical disk layer, it
does nothing to address fragmentation at the logical disk layer. If
Windows sees a file existing as 20 separate pieces at the logical layer,
that means the physical server and SAN storage device will execute 20
separate I/O operations to process the file. That's a lot of overhead to
the physical server and a lot of unnecessary IOPS to the SAN
considering it would have taken just one or two I/O operations to move
the same amount of data if Diskeeper 15 Server was being used to prevent
fragmentation at the logical disk layer," said Morin.
According to Steve Taylor, CTO at Plan B Technologies in Bowie MD,
"Considering that fragmentation dampens the performance of
mission-critical applications by 25% or more, Diskeeper 15 Server's list
price of $399.95 per server makes it a
'no-brainer' for our customer base. If storage administrators want to
keep their SAN storage systems running like new, they need to work with
their in-house Windows server administrator to deploy Diskeeper 15
Server across the physical server environment to prevent fragmentation
from occurring at the logical disk layer. This provides benefits at both
the compute and storage layers since less overhead is required to
process any given file."
Diskeeper
15 Server's patented real-time fragmentation prevention software
operates at the physical server layer where input/output (I/O)
operations originate. By preventing files from being fractured and
broken apart into pieces before being written to disk or SSD in a
non-sequential manner, fragmentation is eliminated before it becomes an
issue. That means a SAN storage system never needs to be taken offline
for defragmentation maintenance.
"Not
only does Diskeeper Server introduce a new era of performance
optimization to SAN storage using hard disk drives, but also using
solid-state drives as well. Fragmentation at the logical disk layer is
inherent to the fabric of Windows despite the storage media on the
backend. Organizations are making heavy CapEx investments into flash but
not getting most from that investment due to the I/O overhead occurring
at the file system layer. Diskeeper 15 Server changes that equation for
them," said Morin.
New to Diskeeper 15 Server:
- IntelliWrite 2.0 has been enhanced to prevent fragmentation from
occurring so files are written in an optimal sequential state for
servers with local storage, direct-attached storage (DAS), and Storage
Area Network (SAN).
- InvisiTasking 2.0 intelligent resource monitoring technology has
been enhanced to allow Diskeeper "background" operations to run with
near-zero resource impact on current activities.
- Instant Defrag 2.0 has been enhanced to monitor volumes to resolve
critically fragmented files in real-time that are known to cause
performance problems, making it SAN-friendly.
For a full list of technical specifications, visit the Diskeeper Server product web page.