Welcome to Condusiv Technologies

A Blog About Bloggers Who Blog About Us

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:49:00 -1200

On contemplating the impact of his calculating engine, the world’s first computer, Charles Babbage wrote “In turning from the smaller instruments in frequent use to the larger and more important machines, the economy arising from the increase of velocity becomes more striking.” He said that in 1832.

I mention this because the idea holds true today—the bigness of everything, the immediacy of everything, the pace of everything—the greater the increase from one state to another, the more striking the difference. And that’s exactly why—when we put V-locity 4 trialware into the hands of virtualization wizards to test in their lairs—we want them to really, really put it through the wringer. The heavier the workload, the greater the application demand, the more striking the results.

Recently two virtualization pros got their hands on the V-locity 4 30-day trial, set up rigorous testing, and blogged the entire experience:

VMware technical architect amazed by V-locity 4 results

Another virtualization blogger amazed by V-locity 4

NEW V-locity 4 VM Accelerator Improves VM Performance by up to 50%

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:00:00 -1200

Today we are very excited to announce the release of V-locity 4 VM Accelerator. With this latest release, V-locity increases VM and application performance by up to 50% and does so without any additional storage hardware.

Let’s face it - in today’s world of virtual environments, we generate a tremendous amount of data and it’s only the beginning. In fact, findings included in a recent study by IDC titled “Extracting Value from Chaos” predict that in the next ten years we will create 50 times more information and 75 times more files.

The impact of this data explosion on server virtualization can often lead to I/O bottlenecks. This is because a physical server running multiple virtual machines (VMs) must often carry out far more I/O operations than one server running a single workload, and typical virtualization environments emulate I/O devices that run less efficiently than native I/O devices.

In essence, virtualization acts like a funnel, combining and mixing many disparate I/O streams, sending out to the disk what becomes a very random I/O pattern. To make matters worse, the more VMs are added, the more the issue is compounded as more I/O is "randomized." All of this has a very negative affect on storage performance, and renders time-honored techniques such as read-ahead buffers and caching algorithms far less effective than in conventional physical environments.

Storage I/O is the most critical issue in a virtualized environment, and can cause organizations to spend a great deal on storage, purchasing more and more disk spindles, but often using only a fraction of their capacity because of performance issues. The outcome is that, due to issues relating to performance bottlenecks in the storage infrastructure, some applications are deemed unable to be virtualized; however, a properly tuned storage environment might have accommodated those applications. So what’s the alternative? The answer is V-locity 4 VM Accelerator.

V-locity 4 VM Accelerator provides:

· Increased application performance up to 50%

· Up to 50% faster access to frequently accessed files

· Faster I/O performance without the cost of additional storage hardware

· Increased VM density per physical server up to 50%

· Extended hardware lifespan by eliminating unnecessary I/Os

· Automatic and real-time operation for true “Set It and Forget It®” management

What makes V-locity 4 so effective is its powerful toolkit of proactive technologies, including IntelliWrite,® V-Aware,® CogniSAN,® InvisiTasking® and the new IntelliMemory® RAM caching technology.

New! IntelliMemory™ Caching Technology
IntelliMemory intelligent caching technology boosts active data, improving I/O response time up to 50% or more while also eliminating unnecessary I/O operations from getting into the network or storage.

Improved! IntelliWrite® Technology
IntelliWrite automatically prevents the operating system from breaking files into pieces and writing those pieces in a performance penalized manner. This proactive approach improves performance up to 50% or more while preventing any negative impact to snapshots replication, data deduplication or thin provisioning growth. As this proactive approach happens at the server level, the network and shared storage simply has less I/O operations to transfer and process.

New! Performance Benefit Analyzer
The Performance Benefits Analyzer helps document the performance benefits of V-locity. The benefit analyzer looks at your current system performance, then compares these results to those after using V-locity to provide a detailed report showing specific improvements and benefits to your system.

V-Aware® Technology
V-Aware detects external resource usage from other virtual machines on the virtual platform and eliminates resource contention that might slow performance.

CogniSAN® Technology
CogniSAN detects external resource usage within a shared storage system, such as a SAN, and allows for transparent optimization by not competing for resources utilized by other VMs over the same storage infrastructure. And it does this without intruding in any way into SAN-layer operations.

InvisiTasking® Technology
InvisiTaksing allows all the V-locity 4 "background" operations within the VM to run with zero resource impact on current production.

Set It and Forget It®
Automatic and real-time operation.

For more details and a FREE trial, visit www.condusiv.com/products/v-locity or call a sales representative at 1-800-829-6468.

Windows 8 Released

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 05:35:00 -1200

Microsoft officially released the next version of Windows last week – Windows 8. While this new release contains various technological advancements, issues with I/O performance and its effect on Windows systems still remains.

Every I/O operation that occurs takes a measureable amount of time. There’s no such thing as an instant I/O request, and simply put, the more I/Os necessary, the longer it will take for Windows to complete a particular task.

To understand why this is still an issue on Windows 8 and even Windows Server 2012, let’s explore a bit deeper. When data is written within the Windows file system, it is naturally written in a non-optimized way. Thus when an application requests the data, the initial I/O request generally gets broken down and splits into many additional requests (called split I/Os), and thus increases the time necessary to retrieve the information. So, as this activity naturally occurs on a daily basis, it takes more and more I/O requests and increasingly impacts the performance of your servers and workstations.

The Windows built-in optimization tool, which is set to run on a weekly basis, attempts to handle the mounting I/O traffic, but that’s after you’ve already experienced the performance impact in the first place. For example, say I’m working on a project on a Tuesday afternoon – how is running the built-in optimization utility on Wednesday going to address this concern?

Proactive Windows I/O acceleration is the key to successful operations and improved response time to users and this is why Condusiv Technologies created our Diskeeper product. Diskeeper’s InvisiTasking and IntelliWrite technologies helps prevent the vast majority of extra I/O requests from occurring and does so without taking any additional resources from the system or other applications. This ensures that you get the least number of I/Os to go to the storage and allows your applications to run that much faster.

In fact, recent independent testing by openBench labs shows up to 98% few I/O requests, server throughput increased by 130% and data throughput up to 5X faster on workstations. You can read more of this report here.

The Next Generation of Real-time Protection and Instant Recovery Software

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:00:00 -1200

Today we announce the worldwide release of Undelete 10 – our real-time data protection and instant data recovery product. With just a touch of a button, Undelete instantly recovers files from Windows servers and workstations – even files that were deleted before Undelete was installed.

Enterprise IT and data have grown immensely since Condusiv first introduced Undelete over 14 years ago. Regardless of the Windows OS you’re running, whether it be a physical or virtual environment – Undelete is the one piece of software your company can’t afford to be without and can truly turn your IT department into a team of heroes.

“I came by Undelete when we had a user delete a whole department worth of files”, says Eric Tremelling, who’s the IT Manager at The Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County. “It did recover all the files for the whole department. I was so impressed that I purchased the Undelete Server edition to avoid future problems. In my opinion, Undelete is one of the best programs we have and saves me lots of potential headaches.”

“We use a backup system that does nightly backups to tape. If something is deleted from the file server by mistake I have to go back to the tapes then pull the correct tape then run a restore on the file, provided there was no corruption or problems with the backup tape. Another issue was that the deleted file could be gone before anyone noticed it was missing and I may not still have a backup that old to recover from. Furthermore, if the file was created during the day before the backup runs at night, it would be gone because it never got backed up yet. The software has gotten us out of many jams”

Have an Undelete story to share? Leave a comment below – we’d love to hear from you!

Undelete 10 features

New One-button Search for Recent Files, which allows the user to locate a file deleted within a 24-hour period or one week period with one click.
New Search Wizard, a single pane view that provides fast and easy way to find a lost file.
New Dynamic User Interface for ease of use, quality of experience.
Undelete 10 Server - Protects server files including those deleted by network clients from a centralized management console.
Undelete 10 Desktop Client – Allows connected laptops, workstations and VMs to recover their own files from remote Undelete 10 Server recovery bins.
Undelete 10 Professional – Protects locally stored files and allows files to be recovered from remote Undelete Server recovery bins.
Undelete 10 Home – Provides comprehensive protection of locally stored files.

When a file is deleted, it is automatically captured and stored in the Undelete Recovery Bin. Undelete 10 captures all the files the Windows Recycle Bin misses, such as those deleted from shared network folders, deleted from commonly used applications, deleted by the Windows command prompt, or replaced when newer versions of a file are saved. Also, if a file is modified several times between a backup or shadow copy, it will not be saved. With Undelete, these file versions will be saved and are recoverable.

The Server, Professional and Client editions of Undelete let you see the contents of Recovery Bins on remote computers like file servers, allowing IT or users to recover their deleted files in seconds anywhere across the network with a single click of a button. It’s no longer necessary to spend hours searching backup tapes or Windows Shadow copies when a user accidentally deletes a file from the server.

Undelete can also restore files previously purged from the Recycle Bin or the Undelete Recovery Bin – even if they were deleted before Undelete was installed

Condusiv Undelete 10 “Set it and Forget It”^® file recovery system runs on all Windows platforms, including those on VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Undelete 10 also supports Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint.

Undelete 10 Server edition supports Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Undelete 10 Client, Professional and Home Editions support Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

In compliance with corporate governance or governmental regulatory requirements for secure data deletion, Undelete provides an electronic data shedder: SecureDelete^® 2.0. Using a bit pattern specified by the National Security Agency (NSA) for the Department of Defense, SecureDelete not only deletes a file but overwrites the disk space the file previously occupied making it virtually impossible for anyone to access.

SSDs and Defrag

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 06:32:00 -1200

We recently responded to a forum post on our YouTube channel regarding SSDs and Defragmentation - you can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hznCSqb4Mzg

Below are some "before and after" graphs that provide proof that fragmentation affects SSDs:

Don’t Risk Leaving Your Data Protection Plan To Luck Of The Draw

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 09:34:00 -1200

It’s been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This proverb especially holds true when it comes to a company’s data protection strategy. Without the right tools in place, it can cost money, time – or even much more.

Circulating across the Internet lately have been many data loss horror stories, including one about a little film called Toy Story 2. With a production budget of $90 million, the film generated near $500 million dollars at the box office and is hailed as one of the most successful animated films of all time. In its early stages however, something went terribly wrong that almost stopped production in its tracks permanently.

According to Oren Jacob, former Chief Technical Officer for Pixar (Associate Technical Director for Toy Story 2 at the time), someone accidentally ran a command on the drive that contained all of the movie files – effectively DELETING most of them. On top of this, it was found that backups had failed for the past month or so – eliminating the possibility of using this data recovery method to put the pieces back together. The collective work of many people over a span of a year was deleted in a matter of seconds - can you imagine? Fortunately, in the end Pixar was able to restore the film’s data by a chance circumstance (watch the clip below to get the details), but the lesson learned here is obvious.

For example, let’s take a genuine moment to consider a current project at your company. Take into account the entire creative process, manpower and cost involved. Go ahead – I’ll wait. Okay, got it? Now picture all that work gone – documents, graphics, everything – truly GONE. What would you do? In one way or another, businesses today can’t risk the need to answer such questions. Instead, a solid data protection plan must be put in place to prevent these types of situations from happening in the first place.

This data protection plan starts with a proper backup solution, but definitely shouldn’t end there. With typical backup routines taking place once daily, huge gaps of time are left vulnerable during the workday where disaster can strike. Software such Condusiv’s Undelete® fills in those gaps and provides real time protection for servers and workstations across your network; allowing for instant data recovery regardless of how files were deleted – even in virtual environments.

"Our entire commissions’ database was saved by the Undelete program. We would have lost a week of commissions (over 2000 records easily). We are very grateful...” -Frank Broggi, Technical Manager, World Travel, Inc.

Hollywood blockbusters require a substantial monetary investment and can sometimes take years to complete production. For them, lack of complete data protection is not an option – is it for you?

Are there “holes” in your company’s data protection plan? Get Undelete and be the company hero – Woody would be proud.

The New Age of Application and Storage Performance Software Is Here

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 03:50:00 -1200

Condusiv Technologies announced today worldwide availability of the next generation in application and storage performance software – Diskeeper 12. Condusiv has long been a leader in data performance solutions for millions of Windows®-based systems for over 30 years. From boosting application performance to extending hardware life and reducing IT traffic, Condusiv offerings ensure massive benefits on Windows servers, workstations and laptops. The latest release in this category is no exception.

Whether you’re running Windows XP or Windows 7, using SSD hard drives or accessing SANs, traditional approaches to defragmentation just aren’t going to cut it anymore. You have to take a new approach - you have to be proactive and you have to be automatic. Simply put – you need Diskeeper 12

“Condusiv Technologies Corporation, winner six times in a row, is unrelenting in its dominance of this category.” – 2011 Reader’s Choice Award: Best Disk Defragmentation and Drive Monitoring Tool, Redmond Magazine

When files are created, deleted, or modified, they can be broken up and scattered around a volume instead of written in one place. This makes retrieving information like trying to read a book whose pages are out of order, and it can quickly overwork the operating system and storage devices.

The best cure for a problem is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Diskeeper 12 prevents fragmentation at the Windows level, allowing an application and storage system to write or read at peak performance – with one contiguous access – improving drive performance while extending the drive’s useful life.

All editions of Diskeeper 12 feature the breakthrough IntelliWrite® technology, which prevents the vast majority (up to 85% or more) of fragmentation from ever occurring.

InvisiTasking® technology has been redesigned in Diskeeper 12 to be more assertive in I/O active environments while still maintaining invisible processing. The enhancements will allow Diskeeper to accomplish more defragmentation and resolve it faster (e.g., Instant Defrag™), during typical production workloads.

In addition, Diskeeper 12 adds a host of new features:

- HyperBoot®—New

o HyperBoot technology has been incorporated into Diskeeper to improve system boot time.

- CogniSAN™—New

o Technology that detects external resource usage within a shared storage system, such as a SAN, and allows for transparent optimization by never competing for resources utilized by other systems over the same storage infrastructure without intruding in any way into SAN-layer operations. (Server editions only)

- Disk Health—New

o This feature monitors hard disk for S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) data to generate alerts and provides a disk health report, warns of critical problems or an imminent disk failure, generates by email.

- System Monitoring—New

o System Monitoring collects system environment activity and provides reporting on key elements. This includes statistical data about system I/O usage, disk state, and Diskeeper effectiveness. The option to send data for analysis at Condusiv Technologies also exists, providing a summary of the statistical data gathered for system performance monitoring purposes.

- Space Reclamation engine—New

o Allows the user to manually or automatically zero out unused space from thin provisioned volumes on SAN and disk array storage.

- Enhanced HyperFast® with TRIM

o A solid state drive optimizer is a proven optimizing technology for Solid State Drives (SSDs), providing faster performance and longer lifespan.

- Titan Defrag Engine™ technology

o The most powerful defrag engine ever built. Designed to meet ever growing storage demands on servers, Titan defragments volumes with massive amounts of data rapidly and thoroughly. Titan is included in the Server edition.

- Terabyte Volume Engine® technology

o Rapidly defragments multi-terabyte volumes. This engine, included in the Diskeeper 12 Professional edition, addresses the need to keep these systems running at top speed as the storage capacity of desktop systems increases.

Figure 1 A glimpse of the new look and feel in Diskeeper.

The Secret to Optimizing the Big Virtual Data Explosion

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:21:00 -1200

In today’s day and age, many SMBs and enterprise-level businesses are “taking to the skies” with cloud computing. These companies realize that working in the cloud comes with many benefits – including reduced cost of in-house hardware, ease of implementation and seamless scalability. However, as you will read on and discover - performance-impacting file fragmentation and the need for defragmentation still exists and is actually amplified in these environments. Based on these factors, it must now be addressed with a two-fold proactive and preventative solution.

Let’s face it – we generate a tremendous amount of data and it’s only the beginning. In fact, findings included in a recent study by IDC titled “Extracting Value from Chaos” predict that in the next ten years we will create 50 times more information and 75 times more files. Now regardless of destination, most of this data is generated on Windows-based computers, which are known to fragment files. Therefore, when files are manipulated they become fragmented before even reaching the cloud. This occurs because as they are worked with, they get broken up into various pieces and scattered to numerous locations across the hard disk. The result is increased time necessary to access these files and affects system performance.

So how does the above scenario affect the big picture? To understand this, let’s take a closer look at your cloud environment. Your data, and in many cases, much of your infrastructure, has “gone virtual”. Users are able to access applications and work with their data basically anywhere in the world. In such an atmosphere, where the amount of RAM and CPU power available is dramatically increased and files are no longer stored locally, how can the need for defragmentation still be an issue?

Well, what do you think happens when all this fragmented data comes together? The answer is an alarming amount of fragmented Big Data that’s now sitting on the hard drives of your cloud solution. This causes bottlenecks that can severely impact your mission-critical applications due to the large-scale unnecessary I/O cycles needed to process the broken up information.

At the end of the day, traditional approaches to defragmentation just aren’t going to cut it anymore and it’s going take the latest software technology implemented on both sides of the cloud to get these issues resolved. It starts with software, such as Diskeeper 12, installed on every local workstation and server, to prevent fragmentation at its core. Added to this is deploying V-locity software across your virtualized network. This one-two punch defragmentation software solution addresses I/O performance concerns, optimizes productivity and will push cloud computing further than you ever thought possible. In these exciting times of emerging new technologies, Cloud computing can send your business soaring or keep it grounded - the choice is up to you.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM OUR CEO: DISKEEPER IS NOW CONDUSIV

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:13:00 -1200

Dear Diskeeper customers and friends,

Shortly after being appointed CEO of Diskeeper, in September 2011, I realized that I had inherited a very talented team with deep engineering expertise and a strong desire to develop thought-leading, high-performance software and products that would have extremely positive and measurable impact on our customers’ business.

We are a very different organization today than we were when the company was founded in 1981. Adopting a new name and brand identity is the logical next step in our growth strategy. As a result, we will cease operating under the name Diskeeper Corporation on March 4, 2012.

Going forward, Diskeeper Corporation will be known as Condusiv Technologies. The name change follows 31 years of successful business, but with a new mission to connect customers and partners, technology and people with the benefits of optimized efficient growth, fast thinking and change.

Condusiv expresses what we have become as an organization as well as what we hope to be — a highly focused company that transcends the boundaries of traditional solutions with innovative products that dramatically improve productivity.

We also want to take this time to introduce Undelete®10, the new release of our real-time file-protection product with Instant Recovery. We will also be launching an aggressive global rebranding campaign to reinforce our mission and introduce our new brand to the public at large.

I want to thank you for your business and loyalty. Every one of us at Condusiv looks forward to doing all that we can do to help you and your business improve and succeed.

Sincerely,

Jerry Baldwin

CEO, Condusiv Technologies

Evaluating IntelliWrite In Your Environment

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:18:00 -1200

IntelliWrite technology has been around for about two years now, optimizing literally millions of systems worldwide. It seamlessly integrates with Windows, delivering optimized writes upon initial I/O (no need for additional, after-the-fact file movement). What does that translate to? Actual fragmentation prevention.

Interestingly, we do occasionally get asked how it bears up against modern storage technologies:

“Don’t the latest SANs optimize themselves?”

“Do I really need this on my VMs? They aren’t physical hard drives, you realize…”

Or even…

“I don’t need to defragment my SAN-hosted VMs.”

Now, there are some factors which must be considered when you’re looking at optimizing I/O in your infrastructure:

I/O from Windows is just abstracted Reads and Writes from a higher layer, even directly over a bare metal disk.
Due to the way current Windows file systems are structured, I/O can be greatly constrained by file fragmentation—no matter what storage lies underneath it.
Fragmentation in Windows means more I/O requests from Windows—even if files are stored perfectly contiguously at the SAN level, Windows still has to send X amount of requests because of the fragmentation that it sees within its top level.
File fragmentation is not the same as block-level (read: SAN-level) fragmentation. Many SAN utilities resolve issues of block-level fragmentation admirably; these do not address file fragmentation.
Finally, and as noted above, IntelliWrite prevents fragmentation in real time by improving Windows “Best Fit” file write logic. This means solving file fragmentation issues with no additional writes which could create issues with SAN de-dup or various copy-on-write data redundancy measures.

We performed testing with a customer recently in order to validate the benefits of IntelliWrite over cutting-edge storage. This customer’s SAN array is less than a year old, and while we don’t want to go into specifics in order to avoid seeming partial, it’s from one of today’s leading SAN vendors.

Testing involved apples to apples comparison on a production VM hosted over the SAN. A non-random workload was generated 3 times, recording Windows-level file fragmentation, several PerfMon metrics, and time to complete the workload. The test was then repeated 3 times, now with IntelliWrite enabled on the same VM’s test volume.

Here were the results:

The breakdown:

Fragmentation reduction with IntelliWrite: 89%

Split IO/sec reduction with IntelliWrite: 81%

Avg. Disk Queue Length reduction with IntelliWrite: 71%

…and with the improvement to these disk performance metrics, the overall time to complete the same actual file operations was reduced by: 48%

The conclusion? If you were asking the same sorts of questions posed earlier, evaluate IntelliWrite for yourself. Remember, the graphs above are on contemporary storage hardware—the older your storage equipment, the greater the improvement in application performance you can expect from investing in optimization. Can you afford to not be seeing maximum performance numbers out of your infrastructure and application investments?

The evaluation is quick and fully transparent. Call today to speak with a representative about evaluating Diskeeper or V-locity in your environment.