[ Off Topic ] Defrag utilities on Raid Arrays Do they Work?

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1
We use Diskeeper on our internal server. The product works well provided
you have sufficient free space, and includes paging files, directory
consolidation and master file table (mft) defragmentation. I let the
program run continuously for the first few days after install, now it runs
overnight and at boot time. The server version provides the ability to
schedule of all computers in the network, including remote systems. We have
less than 1% defragmentation on each of our drives and our server runs
faster, so I would say it is worth the money.

Katharine Barry
kbarry@...
Aspacia Systems Inc
27 North Wacker Drive, Suite 422
Chicago IL 60606
Phone: 866.566.9600 Fax: 312.803.0730
www.aspacia.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Solobay [mailto:jsolobay@...]
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 10:51 AM
To: 'vantage@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] [ Off Topic ] Defrag utilities on Raid Arrays Do
they Work?


To the infinitely knowledgeable Group of the Vantage Users:


Can anyone tell me if the third party NT/2000 Server Defrag Utilities
really
work?

All the info I can find comes from the marketing types that want to sell
the
software.

I'm specifically looking at the one called diskkeeper which does pagefiles
also.

I don't see anything in the Raid info from the Raid manufacturers that
says
whether they help or hurt.

The cost per server is $300 CAD so it's an expensive experiment if it
proves
to be unnecessary.

Also if it does help should it be used on the live Vantage database?

Thanks,

Best regards,

Jerry Solobay

IS/IT Manager

Ebco Aerospace


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
To the infinitely knowledgeable Group of the Vantage Users:


Can anyone tell me if the third party NT/2000 Server Defrag Utilities really
work?

All the info I can find comes from the marketing types that want to sell the
software.

I'm specifically looking at the one called diskkeeper which does pagefiles
also.

I don't see anything in the Raid info from the Raid manufacturers that says
whether they help or hurt.

The cost per server is $300 CAD so it's an expensive experiment if it proves
to be unnecessary.

Also if it does help should it be used on the live Vantage database?

Thanks,

Best regards,

Jerry Solobay

IS/IT Manager

Ebco Aerospace
3
At 01:50 PM 8/17/2001 , you wrote:
>Can anyone tell me if the third party NT/2000 Server Defrag Utilities really
>work?

Yup, I think they speed things up noticeably. I only bother with it on my
Vantage server after installing Progress or Vantage updates. The files are
pretty static otherwise.

>I'm specifically looking at the one called diskkeeper which does pagefiles
>also.

NT will try to create the page file contiguously, if there's enough
space. But Diskeeper can fix it otherwise. The nice thing with Diskeeper
is it will also defrag the directory blocks.

I only have the workstation version of DK; it refuses to let you run it on
NT Server, so they can extract more money from you. On the servers, I use
the Diskeeper Lite which is free-ware. But it can't do the boot time
defrag of the page file and directories. You can move or eliminate the
page file temporarily; run DK-Lite on the partition; then put the page
file settings back and NT will create a contiguous page file in the free
space. The defrag utility in Win2K looks functionally identical to the
DK-Lite product, ie: the full blown one still does more than the freebies.

>I don't see anything in the Raid info from the Raid manufacturers that says
>whether they help or hurt.

Yup, raid disks have to seek too. Will help just like on any other filesystem.

>The cost per server is $300 CAD so it's an expensive experiment if it proves
>to be unnecessary.

You can try the DK Lite freebie, and if you notice an improvement spend the
bucks on the full version, which is even more thorough and adds convenience
features.

>Also if it does help should it be used on the live Vantage database?

Defragging the data and BI file will help performance, but make damn sure
the database is shutdown! If you don't, I think DK will recognize it as an
open file and skip it like any other open file. But I haven't risked
trying. DK has an exclusion list too; you can set it with *.BI, *.D1,
etc. But as long as Progress is shutdown, you want to let it do its thing
on the data files. As always, have a current backup.

-Wayne Cox