Diskeeper 7 and Exchange 2000

[DavrosDalek]

Hi

Looking for some advice regarding using Diskeeper 7 server on the directories that Exchange 2000 is installed on. Good idea or bad idea ? Our exchange 2000 is also on a cluster....

Cheers

Dalek

 

[Guest_imported]

In a couple of companies, we did testing with defrag software (to include Diskeeper) on RAID 5 sets and found very, very, very little performance gain. This was primarily with file type servers, not database servers however since your most likely putting an Exchange database spread over a RAID 5 set, the principal is the same. I emailed Diskeeper support and never received solid info from them - it appeared as though they knew that defragmenting a RAID 5 set was usless.

I'm in no means an expert however after quite a bit of testing, I wouldn't recommend any defragmentation software on a RAID 5 set.

By the way, if you're looking to defrag your Exchange database, you can't do it with anything other than the Exchange eseutil utility (found in \exchsrvr\bin). If this is the case, read the documentation on it and do what's needed.

~cyuris

 

[isguyatlanta]

I have a file server that is so fragmented that it stopped working when someone tried to grow a file. Granted there was limited free space and this was part of the problem too. MS had a Q article about this issue. We installed DK7 about 2 weeks ago and it has made almost NO PROGRESS. We freed up 40 GB of space before installing DK7 and the utility still shows no free space. We have also had an issue with NTFS permissions not taking correctly, i am sure that this is related to the partition being so fragmented.

Maybe there is not performance gain, but I bet I wouldn't be having these phenomenons if someone had been defragging this server the whole time.

 

[Xybertron]

Fragmented is basically parts of the files all over. This slows performance and thats it. It won't break NTFS permissions.

Do not use file level tools on Exchange Servers unless you plan on doing a restore.

What is this Q article? Dan
Microsoft Exchange Support @ Microsoft

 

[mtanner01]

Can a person run the W2K Defrag just on the System Volume (Drive C), which does not contain any of the Exchange DBs or Storage Info? Asking as our Drive C on the Exchange server is 45% fragmented.