Server Defragmentation

OoOoOoOoOo Here's a fun topic!

In my line of business, working with servers is a fairly normal thing. We make sure businesses' computers work on a day to day basis. Part of our job is to make sure that everything operates as quickly as it possibly can. A network of computers is a system that can and must be optimized.

At work we have a main server that supports over 35 users. About 10-15 of those users remote into our server on any given day (remote offices) and of those users, 50%-75% of them use two monitors. This means that a lot of those remote users open up two sessions, one for each monitor due to different resolutions between the monitors.

This equation means a lot of things, but these two things specifically

1. Lots of users and sessions means you need a lot of memory. Just imagine having one computer try to function like 20-40 at the same time.

2. Tons of disk usage. We have a lot of data that is getting used concurrently.

Solutions

1. We thought having 16gig on our main server which hosts virtual servers would be enough.

2. We thought 7 15k rpm SAS drives in raid 5 with a hot spare would be enough.


All that being said, we keep getting complaints about performance. The users say that it takes a while for some programs to start up and you can get spikes of non-responsiveness.

I really hadn't thought of it til' today, but defragmentation on a file server is crucial to its operation. I'll confirm this as soon as we get the chance to put aside enough time to defragment, but we've been running this server with 400gig worth of data for half a year with constant access and modifications without analyzing its need for defragmentation.

If a home computer needs to be defragmented at least yearly, multiply that by 20-40 concurrent users and you'll quickly realize that we dropped the ball on defragmenting the server.

I'll post a follow up on this with performance reports before and after to let you know how things go and if it affects the end-users experience at all. Here's the configuration of the server -

Physical-
Intel Modular Server

Server Computer Module #1-
2 Quad-Core Xeon 2.5Ghz
16GB DDR2667 FB-DIMM RAM
7x 15k rpm Fujitsu 147GB 2.5" SAS Hard Drives
Raid 5 with 1 hot spare

Operating System & setup
Server 2008 64-bit Enterprise
Running Hyper-V

2007 Exchange Server (4gig memory)
Hyper-V Server (hosting virtual servers 4Gig memory)
Terminal Server (8gig memory)