V-locity addresses these issues in most cases upfront before fragmentation can occur with their IntelliWrite Technology. This keeps the disk 85% defragmented. Interestingly it also makes copy-on-write technology like snapshots and clones work more efficiently as well. Another challenge when trying to deploy disk defrag processes is when to have them execute. It can become a scheduling nightmare since you don’t want the defrag process impacting performance of the other VMs on the host. V-locity has a capability called InvisiTasking that provides invisible optimization without the need for scheduling or monitoring jobs.

In the virtual world there are special types of disks that we deal with every day. Linked clones are a great example. Diskeeper’s V-locity is aware of these special disk types and can still provide defragmentation capabilities without making the disks look like they have been changed. The VMs perform better and capacity utilization stays in check.

Thin provisioning is a great feature, but it is often a one way street. If you delete a large amount data the freed capacity is not released back to the global pool of storage. V-locity also addresses this shortcoming by providing virtual disk compaction. The GUI will show each virtual machine and how much disk space can be made available with compaction. Compaction can then be initiated with a single click.

The performance and capacity optimization that Diskeeper offers should be a strong consideration for virtualized environments. The value that it can bring in further optimizing so many of the advanced storage features we have grown dependent on is well worth the investment price.