Disk defragmentation - can this corrupt SQL data?

  • Hi SSC Rookie,

    A fellow Trekker - nice! :w00t:

    I found your post very will written and completely understand your concerns and appreciate your comment about deadlock.

    Although, our company already DOES have a great rep for our products, I can understand when doubts can occur - especially from people that may not completely understand how our products work and the benefits they include.

    We've sold about 45 millions licenses to date! You can absolutely download Diskeeper 12 Server trialware to test out on a system to see for yourself. Everyone has their opinion - but seeing is believing right? 😀 http://www.condusiv.com/trialware

    Also, below are some existing customer opinions, as you requested.

    “Recently Diskeeper saved us by optimizing a production SQL Server. The Windows built-in defrag

    tool wouldn’t even attempt to defrag the SQL database files because the disk space was down to

    23%. It just ignored the problem every time I tried to run it manually. We were getting user

    complaints of poor performance for this application almost daily because the OnBase imaging SQL

    database was in over 11,000 fragments. Now Diskeeper has it down to 8.”

    -Bill Louth, Senior Systems Administrator, TSG Resources, Inc.

    “The main reason we use Diskeeper is for our SQL servers because of its ability to defragment even

    the SQL database files. Diskeeper has already paid for itself.

    “I don't have to worry about the fragmentation state of my production SQL servers. I know that

    Diskeeper with IntelliWrite is keeping them defragged and the drives optimized. I check it now and

    then to make sure everything is running as expected – but it always is.”

    -Dave Holland, Systems Administration Team Lead, Information Technology Toolbox

    Diskeeper has improved the performance quite a bit on the SQL servers. One runs a Content

    Management package that serves up our Customer Utility Billing statements and allows customers

    to access their bills online. We were having performance problems because there are about 500 GB

    of documents that it manages and indexes. New files are added and old files are deleted from it

    each day. The disk was highly fragmented. Installing and running Diskeeper easily improved the

    overall performance by 25%.

    “Another server runs our ESRI GIS database (large maps with data attached to spatial points in a

    Geodatabase). The database on this server is constantly growing and changing. We've frequently

    run the SQL based file indexing function to improve performance. We saw the drives on it also were

    highly fragmented. Installing and running Diskeeper improved the performance by 10% - enough to

    be noticeable when pulling up a map.”

    -Mark Mercer, Information Technology Supervisor, Wyoming Board of Public Utilities

    “Our company is better off from using Diskeeper as our servers, computers and gateways see a

    noticeable difference in file access on the defragged drives. The biggest gains are on systems that

    do a lot of read/writes and even more if the files are temporary.

    “We have been using Diskeeper for a number of years and just recently moved to a new SQL

    Server. Boot times are better and virus scans do run faster. The biggest improvement has been the

    interval between PC ‘cleanings’, when Information Systems go out and clean up the workstations by

    re-imaging. I simply pay attention to how the systems work before and after defragmentation.”

    -James La Borde, IT Director, South Western Federal Credit Union

    “We are running Diskeeper on a Distributed File System server which houses all our corporate

    documents. This server has 500GB of files and was heavily fragmented. Users were experiencing

    latency issues, login delays of roaming profiles and apps would freeze upon saving to that server.

    After running Diskeeper there was a major performance improvement.

    One 10 TB storage server is a backup repository that houses our SQL backups, BackupExec files

    and archived info. Since running Diskeeper, the overall performance of the server and backup times

    improved greatly. The backup time for our DFS has improved as well by hours. Diskeeper has been a

    big help in increasing productivity by mitigating fragmentation which in turn causes access issues on

    the SQL server. Diskeeper with Instant Defrag makes our job easier and let us focus on higher level

    tickets.”

    -Sandy Hyde, Senior Systems Analyst, Business Support Services, Family Insurance Solutions

    If I can answer any other questions, please let me know!

    Alex

    Condusiv Technologies (Formerly Diskeeper Corp)

  • I would still like to see the I/O reliability program report. That's the 'proof' that the product's filter drivers play nice with SQL, honour all I/O requirements and can handle the heaviest load from SQL Server

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • I have used Diskeeper at a previous employer. We used it to keep fragmentation down, but to defrag the database files, we actually needed to shutdown SQL Server. We were able to do this during maintenance periods if nothing else was being done (i.e. other database maintenance or application maintenance).

    I would have no problem using your product after serious testing in a test environment. I have used other defrag tools that did online defragmentation, specifically a product developed by Eagle Software many years ago run on Data General hardware. We started with their off-line product (didn't have an on-line one at the time) and it worked great. Justified purchasing it at one employer simply by noticing that data entry people stopped working 2 or more hours overtime every week.

    When I started at another employer, suggested it there when I first started, it was purchased and we used it until we moved off the DG hardware around 2002/2003 time frame.

    Products like this are great when they work, a nightmare if the don't. Luckily, I haven't had the nightmare (yet).

    I chose to err on the side of caution. I would not purchase the current version of Diskeeper and throw it on a production system and have it defrag the files on the fly. If something did go wrong, I'm the one that would take the heat, not you or your company.

  • Hi Lynn,

    Again - hear you loud and clear! Of course, I can't say much about the issue you had in the past without knowing the exact details, however I CAN say that the new Diskeeper 12 Server automatically removes and prevents 85% of fragmentation on the fly and while databases are online with zero impact on performance or risk of data loss.

    I invite you to also download the trial version and test it on a non-production server to see for yourself - the results may surprise you.

    After you test it and the product speaks for itself, feel free to take the credit when employees comment about performance improvements - I won't tell 😎

    Alex

    Condusiv Technologies (Formerly Diskeeper Corp)

  • AlexKlein (6/21/2012)


    Hi Lynn,

    Again - hear you loud and clear! Of course, I can't say much about the issue you had in the past without knowing the exact details, however I CAN say that the new Diskeeper 12 Server automatically removes and prevents 85% of fragmentation on the fly and while databases are online with zero impact on performance or risk of data loss.

    I invite you to also download the trial version and test it on a non-production server to see for yourself - the results may surprise you.

    After you test it and the product speaks for itself, feel free to take the credit when employees comment about performance improvements - I won't tell 😎

    Alex

    Condusiv Technologies (Formerly Diskeeper Corp)

    Not going to happen where I work now. Government contract, very tight rules on what software can be installed on corporate/government servers.

  • AlexKlein (6/21/2012)


    Hi Lynn,

    Again - hear you loud and clear! Of course, I can't say much about the issue you had in the past without knowing the exact details, however I CAN say that the new Diskeeper 12 Server automatically removes and prevents 85% of fragmentation on the fly and while databases are online with zero impact on performance or risk of data loss.

    I invite you to also download the trial version and test it on a non-production server to see for yourself - the results may surprise you.

    After you test it and the product speaks for itself, feel free to take the credit when employees comment about performance improvements - I won't tell 😎

    Alex

    Condusiv Technologies (Formerly Diskeeper Corp)

    Not to say that I might not suggest/recommend, just not taking it on by myself to do it, even in a test/development environment.

  • Gotcha Lynn! SSC Rookie, please let me know how your testing goes 🙂

    Alex

    Condusiv Technologies (Formerly Diskeeper Corp)

Viewing 7 posts - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply