Disks are slow. Sure, they’ve gotten faster with time (like almost every other technology), but their speed still pales in comparison to system memory. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are changing that, but compared to traditional rotational disks, enterprise grade SSDs are still far more expensive.
If you start to read about disk performance, you’ll quickly realize that the performance of traditional hard disks varies greatly depending on whether you access data sequentially or not. In other words, if I want to read in 1GB of data that’s all together on the disk, that’s going to be much faster than reading 1GB of data that’s scattered about on the disk. That’s because the disk is constantly spinning, and if the data’s not being read in order, it might need to wait for the disk to spin around again in order to read the data. That’s a simplification, but you probably get the idea.
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Let INetU show you how to use Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) to dig deeper than the Windows Task Manager.
When you’re looking for information about what’s running on a Windows system, the first place most people go is the task manager. Unfortunately, sometimes that doesn’t provide all of the information you were looking for. Depending on the information you need, there are a plethora of other tools that you may need to use. That’s where Process Explorer comes in. Process Explorer lets you easily see almost anything you need to know about a process in a single application.
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We’ve all heard the age old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”/”tried and true”. With new versions of most software being released at least every couple of years, keeping up-to-date can be a real chore – especially when that new version breaks something. Just like the costs of upgrading, however, there are hidden costs with falling behind. As vendors start to phase out older versions of their software, new risks begin to emerge:
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With all of the talk about virtualization lately, many organizations are ready to pick up everything and virtualize it. After all, it’s the thing to do! Here are some things to keep in mind before virtualizing everything in sight:
1. Don’t virtualize highly utilized servers
One of the biggest benefits of virtualization is being able to make better use of your hardware. Adding virtualization doesn’t add more horsepower to your server; in fact, it’s another layer that can reduce performance. If you have a service that is already using most of the resources on a fairly powerful server, there’s a good chance that it might not be the best candidate for virtualization. If you decide to virtualize a workload that is disk intensive, consider using a raw pass through disk instead of a virtual hard disk to improve disk I/O performance.
2. Don’t cluster a cluster
Many virtualization platforms allow you to provide for some level of high availability for your VMs. Applications can provide a similar feature, but use caution when using them together. Generally speaking, services clustered with Microsoft Cluster Services that use a shared disk should never be configured in a way that makes the virtual machines automatically move from one server to another. Having multiple levels of failover might cause unexpected results and unnecessary disruptions to users.
3. Don’t virtualize everyone’s desktop (and expect to save money)
There are some legitimate benefits to virtualizing desktops, but cost is usually not one of them. No matter where a desktop is, users still need something to access it with. Server hardware is also inherently more expensive than traditional desktop hardware. On the other hand, virtualized desktops can be a great fit for remote employees, as backup workstations, or to ensure standardized desktops. In most cases, however, a Remote Desktop Services session host (previously Terminal Services and available only on Windows machines) can provide a cheaper and more efficient alternative provided that users don’t require administrative privileges.
4. Don’t create conflicting dependencies
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