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Where are the "Holes" in Virtualisation?
LONDON, February 10, 2011/PRNewswire/ --
- Optimising Lean Storage Utilisation and Maximum I/O Performance
Intense demands for network efficiency and lower operating costs are
driving the phenomenal growth of virtualization. Yet despite outstanding
virtualization technologies, the ability to effectively share resources in
virtual environments runs into three barriers:
1. I/O bottlenecks and performance degradation created by accelerated
fragmentation - the action of breaking up a file into pieces and
writing it to scattered locations on the disk - in virtual platforms.
2. Virtual disks that are set for dynamic growth don't shrink again when
data is deleted. They waste the free space instead.
3. Virtual machines compete for shared I/O resources and their use is not
effectively prioritized across the platform.
A new product from Diskeeper Corporation, V-locity(R) 2, optimizes the
virtual platform using the new InvisiTasking(R) technology that operates
invisibly and without system resource conflicts. Then utilizing
IntelliWrite(R) technology, V-locity 2.0 also prevents most fragmentation
from ever occurring. When fragmentation does happen V-locity puts the
fragmented files back together into one piece so that the files are more
immediately accessible while also consolidating free space. In so doing, it
minimizes unnecessary I/Os passed from the operating system to the disk
subsystem, beating all previous standards for I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598) and reliability.
"One of the key areas to any good virtualization project is performance
optimization. Some folks tend to focus their optimization efforts around CPU
and memory, but fail to consider the effects that virtual machines and file
fragmentation can have on a virtual environment. Defragmentation can
considerably help with disk latency issues and relieve many of the pressures
and bottlenecks associated with consolidating disk I/O channels." David
Marshall, http://VMblog.com
Besides being susceptible to I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598) degradation, the
virtual system is hurt by the accumulation of unusable space. Virtual
platforms can develop free-space "holes" that under normal circumstances will
never be reused. This wasted space unnecessarily hastens the need to purchase
or allocate more physical storage. It happens because, over time, Thin or
Dynamic disks only grow; without help they never shrink, even if data is
deleted. The "holes" left by removed data are still there, taking up space on
the host file system that could otherwise be allocated for other virtual
machines (VMs).
The host virtualization server's file system - VMFS for VMware ESX
Server, or NTFS for Hyper-V - has to be able to contain all the VM files for
every VM that is hosted. A VM file can be preconfigured to its full size from
the start. This is called Thick Disk in VMware's terms and Fixed Disk by
Microsoft; it's the default and the most popular setting. But this setting
automatically eats up each file's limit in storage space, even if the file is
only filled with data to a quarter of its capacity.
The alternative is a better option for saving space: use of the Thin or
Dynamic Disk setting, which sets the space consumption of the file to the
actual file size. Files can grow or can be added as needed. The only problem
with Thin/Dynamic disks is that deleted files aren't really deleted; they're
simply marked as space that is unavailable for writes. This is why the Thin
or Dynamic disk will only grow, and never shrink - unless it has some help.
V-locity was designed not only to improve I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598), but also to
remedy the over-expansion of VM files. It has a Virtual Disk Compaction
feature that provides graphical information about wasted or unused free space
within dynamic virtual hard disks. And it has a one-click capability to
compact the space-wasting virtual disk files. By returning "holes" to
usability in the virtualization host's file system, it permits users to
recycle the unused space on one VM for use in others. It permits the most
efficient space usage possible, to keep storage hardware budgets lean.
Better performance and better storage space utilization are both elements
of the efficiency promised by virtualization. Sharpening efficiency in both
of these areas can result in off-the-charts delivery on the virtualization
promise.
Source: Diskeeper Corporation
Contact: Dorian Culmer, Email: d.culmer@diskeeper.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)1293-763290
Where are the "Holes" in Virtualisation?
LONDON, February 10, 2011/PRNewswire/ --
- Optimising Lean Storage Utilisation and Maximum I/O Performance
Intense demands for network efficiency and lower operating costs are
driving the phenomenal growth of virtualization. Yet despite outstanding
virtualization technologies, the ability to effectively share resources in
virtual environments runs into three barriers:
1. I/O bottlenecks and performance degradation created by accelerated
fragmentation - the action of breaking up a file into pieces and
writing it to scattered locations on the disk - in virtual platforms.
2. Virtual disks that are set for dynamic growth don't shrink again when
data is deleted. They waste the free space instead.
3. Virtual machines compete for shared I/O resources and their use is not
effectively prioritized across the platform.
A new product from Diskeeper Corporation, V-locity(R) 2, optimizes the
virtual platform using the new InvisiTasking(R) technology that operates
invisibly and without system resource conflicts. Then utilizing
IntelliWrite(R) technology, V-locity 2.0 also prevents most fragmentation
from ever occurring. When fragmentation does happen V-locity puts the
fragmented files back together into one piece so that the files are more
immediately accessible while also consolidating free space. In so doing, it
minimizes unnecessary I/Os passed from the operating system to the disk
subsystem, beating all previous standards for I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598) and reliability.
"One of the key areas to any good virtualization project is performance
optimization. Some folks tend to focus their optimization efforts around CPU
and memory, but fail to consider the effects that virtual machines and file
fragmentation can have on a virtual environment. Defragmentation can
considerably help with disk latency issues and relieve many of the pressures
and bottlenecks associated with consolidating disk I/O channels." David
Marshall, http://VMblog.com
Besides being susceptible to I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598) degradation, the
virtual system is hurt by the accumulation of unusable space. Virtual
platforms can develop free-space "holes" that under normal circumstances will
never be reused. This wasted space unnecessarily hastens the need to purchase
or allocate more physical storage. It happens because, over time, Thin or
Dynamic disks only grow; without help they never shrink, even if data is
deleted. The "holes" left by removed data are still there, taking up space on
the host file system that could otherwise be allocated for other virtual
machines (VMs).
The host virtualization server's file system - VMFS for VMware ESX
Server, or NTFS for Hyper-V - has to be able to contain all the VM files for
every VM that is hosted. A VM file can be preconfigured to its full size from
the start. This is called Thick Disk in VMware's terms and Fixed Disk by
Microsoft; it's the default and the most popular setting. But this setting
automatically eats up each file's limit in storage space, even if the file is
only filled with data to a quarter of its capacity.
The alternative is a better option for saving space: use of the Thin or
Dynamic Disk setting, which sets the space consumption of the file to the
actual file size. Files can grow or can be added as needed. The only problem
with Thin/Dynamic disks is that deleted files aren't really deleted; they're
simply marked as space that is unavailable for writes. This is why the Thin
or Dynamic disk will only grow, and never shrink - unless it has some help.
V-locity was designed not only to improve I/O performance (
http://www.diskeeper.com/business/v-locity/?apid=PPS0006598), but also to
remedy the over-expansion of VM files. It has a Virtual Disk Compaction
feature that provides graphical information about wasted or unused free space
within dynamic virtual hard disks. And it has a one-click capability to
compact the space-wasting virtual disk files. By returning "holes" to
usability in the virtualization host's file system, it permits users to
recycle the unused space on one VM for use in others. It permits the most
efficient space usage possible, to keep storage hardware budgets lean.
Better performance and better storage space utilization are both elements
of the efficiency promised by virtualization. Sharpening efficiency in both
of these areas can result in off-the-charts delivery on the virtualization
promise.
Source: Diskeeper Corporation
Contact: Dorian Culmer, Email: d.culmer@diskeeper.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)1293-763290