Diskeeper V-locity 2.0 ($200 per CPU Core)

Diskeeper Corporation has shipped V-locity 2.0 virtual platform disk optimizer to manufacturing, a new optimizer designed to deliver invisible background optimization of all Windows Guest operating systems running on the VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms.  

New to V-locity 2.0, is the addition of the IntelliWrite fragmentation prevention technology originally introduced with Diskeeper 2010. Utilizing IntelliWrite technology, V-locity writes files to the disk to prevent up to 85 percent of fragmentation from occurring before it even happens.

Already a VMware and Microsoft partner for its Diskeeper performance software, V-locity was made to create a virtual-specific product that not only performs defragmentation functions, but also synchronizes the complex and ongoing activity between host and multiple guest operating systems in a virtualized environment.

As virtualization platforms begin to age, fragmentation of files in Windows host and guest operating systems generates more disk I/O than should be necessary. Fragmentation creates more overhead on the OS and file system. While CPU, Network, and memory resources may allow for greater VM density, the disk subsystem can become a virtualization ‘high’ hurdle.

“Fragmentation clogged disk subsystems can lead to an inability to run more VMs on given hardware infrastructure, and lead to disk performance bottlenecks for VMs that share a common storage subsystem,” notes Diskeeper Product Manager, Michael Materie. “V-locity is designed to alleviate the ‘virtual’ disk bottleneck for VMs and provide  a faster and more efficient computing platform for new consolidation and provisioning initiatives, without having to add more hardware.”

Diskeeper Corporation’s proprietary technology, IntelliWrite writes files in a non-fragmented condition. Copy on write solutions (e.g. as used by Snapshots) take action on changes to data at a block level. Moving data, as is done in a defragmentation job to consolidate file fragments in a logical file system, can trigger copy on write solutions to take extra actions such as using more storage capacity, unnecessarily. Writing a file contiguously eliminates the need to defragment it after it has been created.

Diskeeper Corporation’s proprietary InvisiTasking technology is specifically engineered to allow ‘background’ applications to operate with zero impact/overhead on a system. With V-locity, InvisiTasking technology has been ‘enlightened’ to operate across a virtual platform. Even as more VMs are added to a host platform or dynamically migrated to new hosts (e.g. vMotion, Live Migration), the enlightened InvisiTasking will continue to dynamically adjust to changing environments, providing V-locity 2.0 users ‘Set It and Forget It’ optimization of their virtual disk platforms.

V-locity also frees up vital storage resources by eliminating virtual disk ‘bloat’. This is the wasted disk space that takes place when virtual disks are set to dynamically grow but don’t then shrink when users or applications remove data. V-locity actually compacts the virtual disk, thereby preventing waste and allowing IT Managers to better allocate their virtual storage resources.

V-locity consists of three components:

• V-locity Host installed on the VMware ESX Host or Windows Server 2008/R2 operating system running Hyper-V.
• V-locity Guest installed on all Windows virtual machines.
• For VMware ESX platforms: V-locity includes a small application that allows you to remotely connect from your Windows desktop to the V-locity Host component on an ESX system.

Note: On Windows platforms, each component will optimize its respective OS; performing defragmentation of files and consolidation of free space. This minimizes unnecessary I/O passed from the OS to the disk subsystem and aligns data on the drives for optimal access.