The Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) is a security configuration mandated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to standardize the configuration of desktop computers used by U.S. Government agencies. The Defragment software from Diskeeper has been tested to verify compliance with the FDCC under Windows XP and Windows Vista, using a SCAP validated tool with FDCC Scanner capability.

• Diskeeper 2010 is fully functional and operates correctly as intended on systems using the FDCC under Windows XP and Windows Vista.
• The standard installation, operation, maintenance, update of Diskeeper 2010 does not alter the configuration settings from the approved FDCC configuration. Diskeeper uses the Windows Installer Service for installation to the default "program files" directory and is able to silently install and uninstall.
• The Diskeeper 2010 performed correctly on a standard user level account in all functional areas on both operating systems.

You can contact your Public Sector Account Representative at Diskeeper Corporation with any questions about Diskeeper 2010 FDCC compliance.

Find out more about the FDCC here.

I came across a cool "how to" video today. It covers steps to keep a high-end rig running three SSDs in top form. The http://www.sirjamesd.com/ also happens to use HyperFast as part of his toolkit.

You can check it out here: http://www.30monitor.com/keeping-your-ssd-running-brilliant/

On another note, while the author is running Diskeeper Pro Premier, if you only have SSDs in your PC, save yourself some money and just get Diskeeper Home edition with HyperFast. The features in DK Professional and Pro Premier (I-FAAST and TVE) are only useful for HDD.

I'll cover more on I-FAAST and talk about TRIM and defrag in more detail in a follow up post. You can also see this post for some test data from a joint Microsoft/Diskeeper Corporation seminar.

 

Windows IT Pro analyst David Chernicoff just published a new white paper that covers the issues file fragmentation causes on SAN storage. It's titled "Maximize the Performance of your Windows SAN Infrastructure" and you can download it from their website (here). If you don't already have an account with them, you'll need to fill out a quick profile.

 

Government Computer News (GCN) just posted a review of the new Diskeeper 2010 product in an article titled "Defragging files without having to do a defrag".

The review keyed in on a unique and proprietary innovation that can only be found in Diskeeper; IntellliWrite. IntelliWrite is the only way to prevent fragmentation before it happens. 

What they found in their testing is, in a nutshell, Diskeeper makes your computer FAST! GCN did benchmarks with Passmark Performance 7.0 and found scores go from 300.6 (overall performance) and 202.4 (disk performance) to 311.8 and 218.1, respectively.

They also noted that Diskeeper 2010 was more than just a typical upgrade, it was a major innovation...

"We didn’t expect Diskeeper 2010 to actually get to the heart of the matter and fix the inherent problem with Windows operating systems that creates fragmented files in the first place. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is essentially what Diskeeper has done. It’s all part of the company’s new IntelliWrite technology."

GCN gave Diskeeper 2010 the following score: 

Performance:  A
Ease of use: B+
Features: A
Value: A+ 

So, is GCN correct in their analysis? We decided to put them to the test.

Given Paul the Octopus'es 100% success rate predicting World Cup soccer (football) winners, we figured we'd test his skills on performance software as well.

 

Hey, what can you say, the cephalopod mollusk is good!

When you install Diskeeper or V-locity via Diskeeper Administrator, those installations are preconfigured to then send report and alert data back to that instance of Diskeeper Administrator. However, there are many means by which to install Diskeeper that do not include our central management piece. While you may have alternative preferred methods for deploying Diskeeper and V-locity across you network, you may well be interested in using some of the many other robust management aspect of Diskeeper Administrator. For most of those features, you'll want to ensure that the end point installs are aware of the location of the management app, and are sending it data. Having the clients aware of the Administrator supports valuable IT management functions like license management, performance reports, alerts, and more.

Good news is that there are a number of ways Diskeeper and V-locity installations can become “aware” of Diskeeper Administrator in order to send it information.

The easiest discovery method is, using Diskeeper Administrator, to scan the network and discover Diskeeper or V-locity clients on networked computers. A discovered system automatically becomes aware of the presence of Diskeeper Administrator and will start sending it data.

Another option is to use the provided Group Policy template to identify the central management piece for those end point installations.

The data (Diskeeper Administrator computer name) is stored in a text file on each Diskeeper client. So, another way to direct end points to Diskeeper Administrator would be to copy this text file, with the Diskeeper Administrator name already listed, to any/all Diskeeper client(s). This can be a handy option for image-based deployments.

 

As for an install time solution, there is a command line option in setup that can be used to specify the Diskeeper Administrator's location. The setup command line to specify a Diskeeper Administrator computer name with a Diskeeper or V-locity install is:

Setup.exe /s /V"/qn ADMINNAME=\"DKAdminComputerName\""

In summary, even when you use alternative means to deploy Diskeeper and/or V-locity across your network, there are many options to setup up clients for central management via Diskeeper Administrator.

We'll be at TechEd June 6th-10th in New Orleans enjoying cajun cooking and talking up Diskeeper 2010 and the upcoming V-locity 2.0 release. Stop by our booth (#1941)!

As a Gold Partner, the first commercial defragmenter designed for WHS, and even one of the first 8 products to declare support for WHS when Bill Gates first announced it at CES several years back, we’ve been real close with the development team at MS.

 

The MS team’s insight into the needs and capabilities of defrag has led to significant cooperation as they complete the new Drive Extender. We’ve had many calls over the past months and are very happy to say that many of our suggestions and requests have been accommodated. The functionality that has been added from those meetings will result in well integrated and functional third party software solutions.

 

Supporting Drive Extender 2.0…

 

Vail, which is in public beta, has already been generating a great deal of buzz on WHS forums. Drive Extender (DE) is a storage subsystem that extends storage functionality above and beyond what a typical Windows NTFS volume offers. Key purposes of DE are to offer fully automated and easy to use storage. All the complexities associated with fault tolerance solutions like RAID to provide drive reliability, expanding storage over time, and even solving data reliability concerns of commodity drives.

 

Drive Extender in Windows Home Server today implements drives independently and pools them into a common volume. This pool of storage is then presented as a single volume to the user (i.e. D:\). And, just off the root of this pool (D:\shares) you had all your WHS shared folders; e.g. Users, Photos, Videos, etc…

 

The user experience of WHS today is already such that you don’t need to care or interact with the volumes, you could even argue that its discouraged.

 

What is unique in DE 2.0 is that this paradigm has kind of been flip flopped. While it all still looks like a common repository the delineation of storage now begins with those shared folders. So, as an example, let’s take the shared folder “Photos”. In DE 2.0 that folder now becomes a dedicated NTFS volume presented out of the shared storage pool. The folder “Videos” becomes its own NTFS volume, and so on. This design was introduced to support features like real time folder level duplication, etc.. The only minor side effect is that because there are only 26 letters in the English Alphabet, there will be a limitation of the shared folders you can create in this location on WHS. Not a big deal, given the value of the features that this new design offers.

 

If you’ve read this blog and the comments, you’ll pick up that DE is extending a volume (i.e. a shared folder), in 1 GB chunks, taking those chunks from the total available storage pool.  

 

What you effectively have with Drive Extender, then and now, is storage virtualization. Any time you pool storage and then divvy it up exclusively to requestors (in this case the shared folders that become lettered volumes) you need some form of logic for allocating data from the pool. SAN and virtualization administrators already understand this concept, including related technologies such as Thin Provisioning.  

DE 2.0 now adds this to their storage virtualization solution. As you add more data to a shared folder, DE 2.0 will allocate, in 1 GB chunks, more space to the shared folder/volume from the common storage pool. And, should you delete ALL the data in a 1 GB chunk, the 1 GB chunk will dynamically return to the available storage pool to be allocated to any other shared folder that may need the space. DE is well designed to fill up 1 GB chunk before requesting to use more. Very cool stuff!

 

Here’s a demo of how the provisioning works. Assuming 20GB of space (divided into those 1GB chunks)

  

 

You now start to fill up storage adding a little over 4GB of photos and a little over 2GB of music files. That has now pulled eight 1GB chunks from the common pool and these volumes have dynamically expanded to hold up to 5 GB and 3 GB respectively. Keep in mind that files place in the Photos folder will NOT reside on the same 1 GB chunk that contains Music files. In this case, under the DE “covers” they are on completely separate Windows volumes.

  

And, as those eight 1 GB chunks are provisioned to shared folder volumes, the storage pool shrinks by 8GB.

 

  

Now… If you delete all the MP3 music files that reside in one of those 1GB chunks…

  

DE can return that chunk back to the storage pool for re-provisioning re-use with any other shared folder.

 

 

Subsequently shrinking the Music folder/volume to two 1 GB chunks:

 

 

However, there are some conditions in which this provisioning technique can use some assistance, and Diskeeper will be helping out (per the request of the WHS/DE team at MS). Should you delete some of the data from 1 GB chunks, but not all of the data within a 1 GB chunk, you can have a lot of 1 GB chunks allocated to a shared folder/volume, but not actually using all of the space it is taking from the common storage pool. Diskeeper will be helping in these cases to group together all the data spread across sparsely filled 1 GB chunks. We’ll effectively be squishing the data together aligning it along 1 GB boundaries. The benefit of this is that some 1 GB chunks may then be freed up and returned to the storage pool to be assigned to your other shared folders.

 

Here’s a quick graphic to explain the process. Five 1 GB chunks are taken up by the Photos folder/volume. Over time, unwanted photos may be deleted, but the space they were taking up is not made available to any folder other than Photos. In order to make the space (3GB in this example) available for Videos or Music, you would need to move the data out of the sparsely filled chunks. Once done, those now empty 1 GB chunks can be used elsewhere.

 

  

Is this an issue you’ll come across? Maybe. If you do, it’ll likely be a bit of time and a lot of file deletions down the road. The Microsoft provisioning design is well suited to most users who mainly add and retain data. Those who do housecleaning or more involved data management can benefit from the upcoming Diskeeper solution – stay tuned.

 

While we’d like to take credit for this new feature in a future release of Diskeeper HomeServer, it was quite frankly MS directly asking us, as a partner, to add this into our product. Perhaps they’ll add this data squishing into WHS down the road? In the mean time, you can look to Diskeeper to help.

 

PS: thanks to the Microsoft WHS team for reviewing and approving this blog post.

     

Later this month (Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 12:00pm Eastern / 9:00am Pacific), IT Analyst David Chernicoff and I will co-host a webinar covering the benefits and caveats of defragmenting SAN attached servers.

Here is the abstract: 

As storage technologies have become more advanced there is a tendency for storage administrators to believe that the hardware is handling all of their data maintenance needs, keeping their files optimized in the best possible way for top performance and availability. The reality is that hardware solutions alone aren't the most efficient way to keep your critical data stored in an optimal fashion. With this webinar we will give you the information you need to understand how your data is actually being handled and what you can do to improve the performance and optimization of your Windows Server storage.

You can register here: www.windowsitpro.com/go/seminars/diskeeper/windows_san 

We also have two webinars planned for June on the topic of virtualization. One jointly with Redmond Mag, and the other with Microsoft. I'll post registration links on this blog when they are available. Lastly, we'll have a reprise of the SSD webinar we did with Microsoft sometime in July - this time we'll host and Microsoft will be our guest.

Diskeeper Administrator can be used to remotely "un-install" Diskeeper from computers, and reclaim the software license to be re-used on another system. However, decommissioning a machine isn't always planned, and even when it is, removing software is not likely part of the process. In such cases, you can still reclaim the Diskeeper license from the target machine.  

Here is the process: 

1. Open Diskeeper Administrator.

2. Select the Manage Diskeeper option from the Quick Launch pane.

3. Select the Manage Diskeeper Computers and Custom Groups option located under the Manage Diskeeper menu.

4. Through either Active Directory or Network Neighborhood browse options, locate the machine that should be removed.

5. When you find it, right-click on that machine name and choose Remove.

6. This operation may take a moment or two but not only should it remove that machine’s name from the Active Directory or Network Neighborhood view, it should also put that license back in your count of available licenses.

There is another option, introduced a few years ago which comes in real handy for dynamic AD networks with frequent system changes called Automatic Defrag Management. That allows you to establish policies (deployment/configuration) in advance and let Diskeeper Administrator handle everything, including license management, automatically from there on out.

We just updated and released a new version of a popular freeware product for IT Professionals managing Windows networks. The DPAN 3.0 feature set was already included in Diskeeper Administrator 2010 release, but is now available independently (and free).  

Specifically the DPAN 3.0 free app now implements the following new features:

• Support for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server R2

• Support for 64-bit operating systems

• Scanning Active Directory security groups

• Improved Performance Reports consistent with Diskeeper 2010 and Diskeeper Administrator 2010

• Help that explains DPAN operation and reports

• UI and usability improvements

You can download it here. 

 

Last month we were a guest on a Microsoft-hosted webinar covering Windows 7, TRIM, and the continuing need for HyperFast. The presentation focused on the most current releases of SSDs from many of the top SSD vendors (Asax, Apacer, Kingston, Micron and OCZ), who were kind enough to provide us with samples. The webinar discussed Windows 7 features to enhance SSDs, covered the benefits of SSD over HDD, and lastly discussed the performance loss due to file fragmentation. That presentation continues to be available for MS partners on the MS partner site.

In the next few months Diskeeper will re-host this presentation, this time with Microsoft as a guest. That webinar will be posted here on the Diskeeper website for everyone to view.

In the meantime, I've included some of the key slides for anyone interested. The tests present aggregate averages from all the SSDs tested, as the purpose was to show their value above HDD, and not as a comparison of one vendor's SSD versus another.  I also realize that there may be questions as to test scenario specifics, etc... Those details were covered in the presentation on Microsoft's site, and will be covered again when Diskeeper hosts the next presentation in a couple of months. So, if you'd like to get into more detail, go to the MS partner portal or stay tuned for the Diskeeper hosted syndication.

The presentation starts by showing that a typical modern SATA SSD (average from above named vendors) clearly outperforms a typical modern SATA HDD.

SSD versus HDD MB/Sec Transfer Rates:

Windows 7 has numerous improvements to accommodate SSDs:

And...

Fragmentation affects SSDs, and yes, even those with TRIM support. Various benchmarking tools and procedures were used to measure the affect of fragmentation on TRIMM'ed SSD performance. (note: TRIM can be initiated in Windows by actions such as emptying the Recycle Bin, but the SSD must also execute the command).

Fragmented SSD versus Optimized SSD test using ATTO Benchmark:

 Fragmented SSD versus Optimized SSD test using HDBench:

 

Fragmented SSD versus Optimized SSD test using PCMark05: 

Fragmented SSD versus Optimized SSD test using File Copy Test:

Using a specialized SSD optimizer such as HyperFast returns performance to like-new conditions:

In summary, if you want a top performing system, go get Windows 7 and one of those SSDs named above. Then add HyperFast to keep it that way.

We're looking for some current Diskeeper or V-locity customers that are interested in field testing a major new V-locity release. The new version will support both Hyper-V and ESX (3.5 and 4.0).

The field tests will start in a few weeks.

If you are a current customer and are interested and able to install, evaluate and then comment (fill out a 5 minute online survey) on this software, simply fill-out a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) located here.

Fax the signed NDA to:
Fax: 818-252-5514

Please add the following to the Fax cover page:
Attn: Field Test Administrator/V-locity Field Test

Alternatively you can email the signed NDA (scan in the pages with your signature) to our Field Test administrator. Please add "V-locity Field Test" in the subject line.

If you live in on the west coast (USA), you may have seen an ad campaign about happy cows coming from California. Given we're a CA-based software company we concur.

OK wait a minute. Why are we talking about cows? What does this have to do with defrag? Maybe you're thinking "Michael's talking bovine, he's had a few too many".

Well maybe yes, but... I do have a point.  

CoW, or "copy on write" refers to a low level technology that looks at block data changes and then takes a particular action. Every time there is a write, a CoW technology would seek to make a copy of just the changes - not the entire new file. That action may be part of inline data dedupe, may be a snapshot, etc. The basic point is that CoW is used to isolate changes to data at a granular level rather than at a file level.

The consideration is that most CoW technologies are unable to distinguish between changes to data or movement of pieces of data, due to a defragmentation job. In other words, if you run a defrag, CoW may think there are actual data changes to files, and then take action to make block-change copies, run a dedupe, etc...

Holy CoW you say!

So, it is possible that a defrag, any kind of defrag, causes a CoW based technology to go into hyperactive mode. That may mean a CDP (continuous data protection)/snapshot program may be triggered in to keeping/taking far more copies that it needs to. It is basically fooled into thinking that a defrag represents actual changes to data, and that they need to process those changes. Now this is a false processing but, because most CoW solutions function underneath the file system layer, they simply cannot differentiate that actions that take place at the file system are not changes to data, but rather data-movement-for-optimization reasons.

So, if we're talking about a CoW solution that takes snapshots, we could see an increase in the amount of copies that a snapshot solution would have to take. That would make for a fairly fat CoW (a lot of extra data storage demands created by not understanding defrag).

CoW based solutions that work at the file system level (NTFS), have the possibility to recognize changes due to defrag and differentiate them from changes due to new actual data to a file. One such CoW solution is Microsft's VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service). However, as noted, most CoW technologies operate at storage layers that are abstracted from the local disk file system - they operate at levels underneath the file system. Again, that means defrag jobs in the file system will not be recognized by these solutions, and a defrag job of any kind, will cause unnecessary copies.

In comes IntelliWrite. Now, it makes sense to think that IntelliWrite was invented as a faster and, perhaps cooler, solution to fragmentation. But, the truth is that solving fragmentation at the source (when it is created) is vital to ensure compatibility with many of the CoW solutions that may be implemented at virtualization host or SAN layer (i.e. underneath and hence, unaware of the file system).

So, in a nutshell, IntelliWrite was very much designed to ensure that defrag offered full compatibility with modern storage technologies. That, we feel, makes for happy CoWs.

In anticipation of an upcoming presentation (March 10) from Microsoft promoting SSDs, and best practices for optimizing SSDs, is a HyperFast review by V3 (from last year). They tested HyperFast to see what benefit it would provide. Read it here. 

 

If you're looking to defragment SANs (Storage Area Networks) or VMs (virtual machines), you're on the right track. But, there are things you need to be aware of. Defragmenting SAN attached storage and VMs can require planning, implementation, and configuration that is generally unnecessary with direct attached storage (DAS). 

For example, what do you do if you use Thin Provisioning? What about Linked Clones? Does defrag still help if your multipathing? 

The paper sets out to address many considerations and technologies in modern storage infrastructures, and offers "best practices" guidance based on our decades of experience working with many of the largest companies in the world to help them maximize their system's performance and reliability.  

Click on the image below to read the paper.

It makes for fascinating reading on a Saturday night. Just get the fireplace firing, grab some milk and cookies, get a warm blanket and curl up in bed (or on the couch) and enjoy! ;-)

The chart below present results from testing our engineers did in conjuction with engineers at a longtime Diskeeper customer, Solvay Pharmaceuticals (now Abbott), last summer. The tests, done on VMware ESX 3.5 with direct attached storage (DAS), were specifically "proof of concept" that Windows Guest VMs need to be defragmented. A tool we frequently recommend called ReadFile was used to gauge speed of file access. Symantec AV was also run and timed.  

You can view a larger image of above graph here as well: VMware performance gains.jpg (319.27 kb)

“My first impression of Diskeeper 2010, AWESOME!  The ability to proactively prevent fragmentation BEFORE it happens is the Holy Grail of disk I/O management.” - Bruce McMillan, Solvay

 

With close to 400,000 systems, the Naval Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI), managed by EDS/HP, is "the largest internal computer network in the world" and has been using Diskeeper on their systems for close to a decade now: 

"We run Diskeeper on our two production web servers and the development server that we are using to host a web-based warfare systems interface management tool. The name of the application is Warfare Interface Systems Engineering (WISE). 

I am a big fan of Diskeeper because I am all too aware of the problems that  fragmentation can cause on a system. I use it at home as well. I specifically like the feature that keeps your drives defragmented automatically via a background process that does not rely on manual defragmentation of the drives. Because I know that if you leave that up to a user or even some administrators to do, it will never get done and people will be wondering why their system performance is starting to degrade.  

Our office systems are a part of the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet and all of these systems have Diskeeper running on them as well [almost 400,000]. I know all too well this group of users in our command. I used to work IT support and they would never defrag their systems. I do some PC work on the side with home users and I see the same thing there."

Mike M, US NavyNSWC Dam Neck

Virginia Beach, VA

 

"Not only does Diskeeper's software attempt to prevent fragmentation from ever occurring, but it cuts power consumption and unnecessary I/O operations."

"IT administrators who turn frequently to disk defragmentation tools should have a look at Diskeeper 2010." 

- Jason Brooks, eWeek

 

eWeek ran some tests to see if IntelliWrite really lived up to the promise and, no surprise to us, it clearly did. Their tests, done with Windows XP guests running on VMware vShpere 4, found IntelliWrite prevented 87% of fragmentation. Invisitasking quickly cleaned up the few pieces that slipped through.

Read the full article here.

A cure for cancer it is not, but in the category of performance (defrag) software, IntelliWrite is quite the bold, unorthodox step forward. Like many things new and revolutionary it is to be questioned, critiqued and qualified.

When we created IntelliWrite we had to first question the old way of doing things. Same goes for you, the user. You also need to form your own opinion on whether a new approach to eliminating fragmentation is warranted and worthwhile.

Now of course new does not necesarrily mean better, but new can, when done right change the way of things... for the better.

Our customers are our best and favorites critics. We hope we have provided you value and have earned your approval.

IntelliWrite technology is, as the name would imply, smart. Not only is it a better solution to removing fragmentation (it prevents fragmentation), but it actually self-learns; i.e. it gets smarter over time. Or perhaps more simply as one customer, who per his company policy must remain anonymous :-(, said, "crazy smart".

 

IntelliWrite learns how the various different applications on your system write data, much like advanced heuristic anti-virus solutions that learn "patterns" and can then proactively block new, as yet unreported, malware. IntelliWrite adapts to the applications on your system and how they write, and thereby fragment your files. That adaptive learning makes IntelliWrite increasingly more effective on your computer.  

Another part of the technology is an awareness of its surroundings. IntelliWrite automatically detects conditions where it might affect system performance and backs off, thus providing the best balance for performance – improves performance when fragmentation can be prevented and does not impact free space fragmentation when it might matter (i.e. when the available space is very low). One such easy-to-demonstrate case is on volumes with less than 2GB free space; IntelliWrite disables itself.

We began the process of securing the intellectual property rights to this revolutionary innovation prior to the release. You don't have to be a crazy Irishman to know that if you're looking for "The only way to prevent fragmentation before it happens(tm)", you've come to the right place.

 

The update to Undelete 2009 to support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008r2 is available. It also includes some general fixes.

I recommend going to your Account Page and downloading from there.