Defrag on a SANS environment
Victor Toal November 12 2008 11:21:26 AM
I received quite a few mails regarding defragging in general and I shared some of them with Preemptive/Adam Osbourne in Australia. Like I said, I like to kick tires on a product, especially if it declares it can do something that I have previously considered to be .. ahem ... not really productive. also, anybody who has ever sat through a session with Susan Bulloch will know that she can give you a tongue lashing about the foolishness of defragging on a SANS that will leave you standing there like a 1st grader in front of your teacher after you have just been caught using somebody else's crayons .... on paper you were not supposed to use either ...
Here an excerpt from Adam's response:
"Regarding defragging on a SAN. I too once believed that it would make little to no difference. However our tests have shown otherwise. The key appears to be split I/Os that occur by the OS. These occur when the OS believes there is fragmentation, and they take time to handle, and that time really adds up. We have seen massive read time reductions (4 times faster) on enterprise sans when fragmentation is removed. This not only increases read performance, but reduces CPU and backup times (which can be 4 times faster - a very nice side effect). "
OK - interesting point.
Right now I have no access to an environment on a SANS that I would get authorization to install this tool on. Is there anybody out there who does? Somebody who understands the technology and can either confirm or deny? ANYBODY OUT THERE??????
I must admit that my knowledge about SANS HW is rather shallow. I am a user of space they give me, not a HW engineer that creates them and has to then keep them running.
OK guys, goeth forth and testeth for me ... I will share results and comments I get in mails as they come in.
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