Don’t Let Fragmentation Bring You Down from the Cloud

The last couple of years have brought the “next big platform” to the computing world: cloud computing. A true paradigm shift, cloud computing makes it possible for companies to change over from costly company-owned computing resources to performing most needed processes via simple web interfaces through facilities owned and located outside the enterprise.

The actual computing is done by vendors providing infrastructure, platforms and software as services, and is performed using server farms that spawn virtual machines on demand to meet client needs. Several heavy-hitting companies offer full cloud computing services, including Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. As cloud computing gains broader acceptance—which is rapidly occurring—many more providers are certain to arrive on the scene.

While it would seem that a technology as lofty as cloud computing would be far beyond the simple performance problems that have plagued systems since the earliest days, it is unfortunately not true. Yes, file fragmentation is still with us—and is more of a detriment than ever.

A key component of cloud computing is the use of virtual machines. In this environment, a single drive or set of drives is supporting a number of virtual machines—and data from all of those machines is saved on the drive or set of drives. File fragmentation, which drastically slows down performance on any drive, has an even more profound effect in virtual machines.

A virtual machine has its own I/O request which is relayed to the host system. This means that multiple I/O requests are occurring for each file request—at least one request for the guest system, another for the host system. When files are split into hundreds or thousands of fragments (not at all uncommon) there are multiple I/O requests for each fragment of every file. This scenario is then multiplied by the number of virtual machines resident on any host server, then again multiplied by the number of servers. Performance is drastically slowed—and can even be stopped—for an entire computing cloud.

Such advanced technology requires advanced solutions. The only fragmentation solution that can keep the cloud aloft is one that ensures files stored at the virtual environment hardware layer are consistently and automatically in an unfragmented state. This method uses only idle resources to actually prevent a majority of fragmentation before it occurs, which means that users are never negatively affected performance-wise, and scheduling is never required. Performance and reliability virtual machines—and thus the cloud—are constantly maximized.

Don’t let fragmentation bring you down from the cloud. Ensure your cloud computing service provider is employing a fragmentation solution that will truly allow it to fly.