Virtual Machines And Disk Fragmentation Issues

Virtual machine applications such as Parallels, Virtual Pc and VM Ware are becoming increasingly popular as they allow users a number of options that would otherwise be unavailable to them for example a clean system for faster performance or perhaps the ability to test an application in isolation from your main operating system. Sadly the common hard drive is still a factor that needs consideration as fragmentation can cause data problems.Virtual machines must still make use of the slowest part of any modern computer system: hard drive technology. Hard Drives can be partitioned to appear as dedicated individual devices, these devices are then often utilized to store virtual partitions and virtual operating systems. Underneath this “virtual” layer, the hardware is storing data as it always has, in a fragmented inefficient manner.

Hard disk fragmentation occurs when files are split in to multiple chunks as they are slotted into spare space on the hard drive. If you are running a solitary OS chances are you have already noticed considerable slow down in your system since purchase. Just imagine two or more OS’s running causing the same file fragmentation! Pretty soon your system could come to a grinding halt.

Fragmentation will not only slow down your computer or server but due to the excessive and unwarranted extra movement of the heads, the life of your storage device(s) can be seriously reduced. The problem is not only limited to single drives however, even if you have a very well specked raid set up, fragmentation can get so severe that the only viable option is data recovery or server rebuild.

You would like to think that as the problem of file fragmentation has been with us since the advent of hard drive based computer systems, operating system vendors would have come up with a software solution to ensure the problem is eradicated at source. Whilst Mac OS X will partially help with files under a 20 mb size, Windows operating systems seem to pay it no heed whatsoever.

Defragmentation utilities can take care of this problem, however, running them practically ties up the machine until completion, slowing the machine to a crawl. So what can be done to remove this issue? There are a number of possibilities that can be tried.

Use automated defragmentation routines: Dependent upon your OS you can normally, either directly in the OS itself or via third party software; schedule defrags to run at times convenient to yourself.

Invest in dedicated hardware. Not the cheapest solution but for business and power user home systems probably the most sensible route. Dedicated hardware could be an additional hard drive (internal or external) a dedicated raid array or even an SSD device. The actual solution will depend on how mission critical the application actually is.