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March 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Windows Live SkyDrive

TAGS: Storage

I've been having a blast with a great site someone recommended my way called MediaFire.com where the premise is that you can upload files and share them with anyone. It's free, you can upload files that are as large as 100MB (or zip up a bunch of files so long as the zipped file is under 100MB) and you can store an unlimited amount of storage.

What I love about it is that it is quick... has the easiest interface I've seen since Google's search bar (which they continue to leave pristine) and I can use it to go from one system to another and access my files just by logging in, or I can send invitations for others to download large file types without worrying about an FTP site. And it's fast... which works in harmony with the name.

It looks like Microsoft wants a piece of the action too though. Windows Live SkyDrive... what does it offer? Well it has a limit of 5 GB of free storage from any online PC or Web-enabled mobile device. You can access personal folders that only you access, or share stuff with classmates, co-workers or family by storing items in a shared folder that you can control who can see and add files. Each folder on SkyDrive has its own Web address that you can send in an e-mail, paste in a document, add as a favorite, or save as a shortcut.

Now I love MediaFire, but I can see the value of SkyDrive. It offers a bit more of a personal portal, a SharePoint online space to work with, perhaps collaborate a bit more. It goes beyond the sharing of files... so I will continue to use MediaFire for my file sharing around the world... but I will take a deeper look into SkyDrive for some collaboration. Then again... Groove is another fine product for anywhere, anytime collaboration. Which to choose? You tell me... comment in if you have opinions of one idea over another!

And if you want to see what the SkyDrive team is blogging about, check out their comments here.

Posted by J. Peter Bruzzese on March 7, 2008 11:27 AM

November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The Heartbreak of Drive Fragmentation

TAGS: Storage

The conversation is always the same. "This laptop (or desktop, or server) was so fast when I first got it," someone will say to me, "but it just seems to get slower and slower."

"Have you run disk defragmentation on it recently?" I ask.

"I thought that (Vista/Windows XP/Windows Server) did that automatically now..."

And there it is.
On the surface, defrag is a simple system maintenance task. And in theory, it should be run daily on systems with a lot of storage activity--like Exchange and Sharepoint servers, for example. But with the ever-expanding amount of storage attached to even the most rudimentay of servers makes the window for running a full disk defragmentation on a server daily on a schedule--and squeezing in a system backup as well--something of a challenge without some sort of software help beyond scripts.

For some network-attached storage (NAS), the defragmentation is out of Windows' hands--the NAS server has to handle its own defragmentation. But fragmentation of logical Windows volumes on a SAN are just like fragmentation on local disk--even if they are virtual volumes, the file system appears as a physical device to Windows, and it will reassign blocks just like it will on a local disk. Fail to defrag the SAN volumes, and suddenly that ever-expanding disk farm can start to cut into server read-write performance.

Even on desktops, where there's less utilization on average and defrag needs to be run less frequently, defragmentation often seems like an afterthought for many desktop support managers. And you can't trust the users to do it: a survey in August found that 42% or PC users never ran a defragmentation utility at all.

If there was ever a case for automation of a system task, defragmentation is it. One of Vista's biggest selling points, in my mind, is that it comes with an automatic disk defragmentation utility--systems can run a scheduled defrag without user intervention. Yes, Vista users, it does do defrag automatically--but you have to turn it on.

However, automated Windows Vista defragmentation might not be such a blessing for some users--the utility uses multipass defragmentation, and, according to a Gartner research note, "characteristically fragments the remaining free space on the disk, which accellerates fragmentation later."

That isn't the case on Windows Server yet. And the standard disk defrag utility that comes with Windows Server 2003 may not be up to handling large logical volumes attached on a SAN. Solutions like DiskKeeper 2008 provide "real-time" defragmentation, correcting fragmentation as it happens on the server.

But there's a school of thought that says continuous defragmentation is evil, in that it requires system overhead to determine when disks are fragmented--dropping server performance. That's the contention of folks like Raxco Software, which markets PerfectDisk, a "single-pass" defrag tool. A scheduled, high-performance disk defrag, they say, is better, because at least it won't take away from I/O performance when it's not running.

Since I'm not currently running several terabytes of Windows storage in an enterprise environment, I'm not in a position to really place any value on either the continuous or scripted defrag positions. For servers with low processor utilization but a high volume of file I/O, it would seem the continuous route would make more sense. But I'd like a second, third, and fourth opinion on that first. Anyone?

Posted by Sean Gallagher on November 5, 2007 12:43 PM