Do Virtual Systems Suffer From Fragmentation?

Written by: Derek De Vette, VP of channel affairs for Diskeeper

[Editor’s note: Business Solutions is pleased to provide this joint article between VAR and vendor.]

Let me start by getting the “V” word out of the way. Unless you’ve been hibernating in an underwater sea dwelling, odds are you’ve heard the growing buzz over virtualization. Most do it for reasons of hardware consolidation. Others for power consumption. Either way, virtualization delivers what it promises. But there is a catch. If you consolidate two or three servers into one, that single storage device will now receive two or three times the volume of input/output (I/O) traffic. And consequently two to three times the levels of fragmentation.

Worse, fragmentation happens twice as much in the virtual environment. Why? Because it takes place at the physical level (host) and the virtual level (guest). So, if you don’t have a professional grade defragmenter in place in your virtual set up, now is the time to come up to speed. But don’t just take my word on it. I’m going pass the rest of this piece over to Dave Sobel, Diskeeper partner and founder and CEO of Evolve Technologies. Dave recently published a book titled, Virtualization: Defined—A Primer for the SMB Consultant. The below chapter has been excerpted in its entirety.

 A Primer for the SMB Consultant



To speak with the authors, Dave can be reached at dave@evolvetech.com and Derek at derek@diskeeper.com.