Defragging Servers

[rajk1984]

I'm interested in a quick opinion of the group. We're getting onboard with Labtech at the moment, and one of the standard monitors is for whether a machine needs to be defragged or not.
So I switched it on for all the servers that the Labtech agent was installed on. Lo and behold, every server reported back that every drive needed to be defragged.

Got me wondering though, what is the current thinking on defragging servers? Workstations is another matter, but defragging servers can be a problem in my understanding because of things like:

1. Any image based backups will be screwed e.g. Acronis or Shadowprotect etc.

2. I've been told that Previous versions also get mucked up.

3. Large files can be a big issue e.g. Exchange information store etc.

I notice as well that the Labtech defrag script will not run if the server is an SBS. Guessing it may be for those reasons...

So do you defrag servers or do you leave alone?

[charlie]

Shadowprotect actually recommend that you do defrag your machine(s) regularly, particularly with continuous incremental backups as that way the
changes become minor and add only slightly to each backup. Otherwise, when an irregular backup is made, the sector changes can be massive and result in
the massive incremental backups you fear. Assigning a drive to hold files such as Pagefile, temp, IE Temp, Trend SMEX
and Definition files etc. that by nature will be highly fragmented and that you don't back up can help a lot.

[boris]

>> Got me wondering though, what is the current thinking on defragging servers? Workstations is another matter, but defragging servers can be a
problem in my understanding because of things like: Have you looked at Diskeeper Server 2010 from www.diskeeper.com?
Unlike a traditional defragmentation program, I think they also has an option to continuously monitor the drive and reduce the need for a full defragmentation.

[natalie]

Had a sluggish SBS 2003 server. Ran PerfectDisk once a month and performance improved.

[grestone]

It's also very helpful to defrag Exchange databases - not just an online or offline database defrag but a filesystem defrag of the actual files. It can
really improve the responsiveness of Exchange. I like to use Sysinternals' config for this:

[charlie]

I would recommend using O&O Defrag for servers as I find diskeeper doesn't do as well as a job as O&O does.