New Product Spotlight: Align Your Drives on a Virtual Network with Paragon’s new Partition Alignment Tool

As newer 4K Advanced Format hard disk drives become more prevalent in the virtual environment, partition alignment issues continue to increase in frequency (especially, with machines running Microsoft XP and Server 2003) — and are now permeating the virtual environment. The problem of partition misalignment is that it causes slow write times and inefficient disk operations because the physical and the logical sectors are not aligned. The misalignment causes redundant read/write operations, thus putting unnecessary strain on the hardware. The Paragon Alignment Tool (PAT) ESX version follows on our partition alignment software technology in PAT 3.0, launched a few months ago for consumer products.

PAT ESX was developed to facilitate remote partition alignment of virtual systems. PAT ESX requires minimal virtual disk space (only 3 – 4MB per disk) to perform partition alignment with no need for additional space on the system for snapshots or copies of the processed volume. Should an unexpected interruption occur, the alignment operation can be continued without loss of data or need for restoration.

Click on the image to see a video on Paragon's partition alignment software for virtual environments

With the growing trend in resource consolidation through virtualization, we are seeing significant increases in the number of virtual servers and workstations. Due to the transition of the storage standard from 512B to 4K sectors, the appearance of partition misalignment and performance issues in these systems are increasing. Our customers’ need to resolve these issues is what drove the development of PAT ESX!

The partition alignment software provides easy and comprehensive management for virtual disk alignment operations. Installed on an administrator’s machine within the ESX environment, PAT ESX enables remote access to all virtual disks to check their state and perform alignments in an unattended mode. PAT ESX allows an administrator to browse data stores, select target virtual machines, and then connect to virtual disks to determine whether partition alignment is required. PAT then recommends alignment options if needed.

The Partition Alignment Tool Benefits include an increase virtual machine operations’ performance up to 300 percent, External control, management and alignment of dozens of virtual drives located on different virtual servers (no need to install on every virtual machine); and a decrease hardware costs by eliminating the need to have storage dedicated for migration functions.

To learn more about PAT for ESX, see our press release at Paragon Alignment Tool™ 3.0 for ESX® Now Available for Remote Partition Alignment in the Virtual Environment

Case Study Spotlight — Non-Profit HCJB Global Selects Paragon Disaster Recovery Software: Drive Backup Server and Virtual Editions

“We evaluated similar software solutions to cost-effectively backup our systems, but nothing came close to Paragon’s backup and recovery software.”

— Ron With, Network Administrator

HCJB Global is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing health services to disadvantaged people and promoting Christianity through its various media outlets. Like most non-profits, however, they have limited finances. When they needed to invest in disaster recovery software, they consulted with their information technology reseller; however they could offer nothing within their price range that could fulfill their needs. When HCJB Global conducted a search of its own for affordable backup and restore software, they came across Paragon Software Group’s Drive Backup Server and Virtual Editions.

Paragon Drive Backup is feature-rich, image-based backup and backup and  recovery software that protects data, minimizes downtime, and lowers data storage and management costs while ensuring business continuity through instant system recovery. Live server migration technology (P2V, V2P, V2V and P2P) makes conversions easy and allows you to leverage virtual environments for powerful and flexible disaster recovery strategies.

“When we compared Paragon’s Drive Backup software to the other solutions recommended by our consultant, nothing came close for the price — it offered an intuitive interface, auto-scheduler, and ultimately peace of mind,” stated Ron With, network administrator for HCJB Global. Drive Backup provided cost-effective backup and restore software features for HCJB, including virtual backup and restore, automated scheduling, and an intuitive interface.  To read the case study in its entirety, visit Non-Profit HCJB Global Selects Paragon Software’s Drive Backup Server and Virtual Editions to Ensure Business Continuity.

Removing Boundaries Between Physical and Virtual Environments

Virtualization is a current key trend across all IT segments.  The benefits of virtualization are well known and widely leveraged since data can now be stored and managed over diverse virtual environments in large data centers – or simple standalone servers. Even the most populous segment – home users, can now virtualize their existing software or make cross-platform configurations.

This article highlights how Paragon ConnectVD Technology addresses many data management challenges on diverse virtual and physical machines. ConnectVD allows a myriad of tasks to be performed with ease in a virtual environment – such as partitioning, data transferring, imaging, copying and many other complex tasks.
<h1>Virtualization Challenges</h1>
One of the key benefits of virtualization is that you can run as many virtualized environments on one physical computer using currently available hardware.  The number of serviceable systems may widely differ when using a single physical computer/single system approach or when leveraging dozens of virtualized systems. However the capabilities of IT personnel and administrators are not unlimited and expanding number of virtualized systems may cause a significant work backlogs.

Another thing to consider is that there are many different types of virtualization software. The main vendors are VMware, Microsoft, and Oracle, who offer incompatible solutions with many versions: enterprise or home user; bundled to the OS or independent; copyrighted by license or open-sourced. Managing and transferring data between these environments can be highly complex and nerve-wracking if things go awry.

These vendors naturally provide instruments for data management, migration, and conversion on virtual machines, but there are few vendor independent software tools that support all types of virtual machines. Administrators are typically faced with using many different tools simultaneously to perform tasks such as copying files between VM’s or virtual disk conversions.

Additionally, a typical VM is a complex environment that completely copies the physical computer’s partitions, file systems, one or several operating systems, software and data. On each level a special type of management is needed, which may or may not be provided by the VM software. If you recently installed all the necessary utilities, tools and management software to one or several physical machines, now you have to repeat this process with many virtualized clones. Having software that provides tools for the external management of data on dozens of VM’s from an original single copy is quite handy.

In brief, the major virtualized system management issues are the following: efficient management of a large number of virtual machines  using a limited number of physical servers; the need to support data transfer and management between different types of VM’s; and the need for universal data management tools that can service as many VM’s from the outside physical world as possible.

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A Major Problem With Solid State Drives (SSD)

The Misaligned partitions problem is even more important for SSD drives than for traditional hard disk drives. Many modern SSD drives have an internal memory page size 4096 bytes or larger accordingly to 4K size, which are some analogue for 4K sectors. Thus all previously mentioned problems are the same for SSD partitions alignment.

This issue of SSD misalignment was highlighted in a recent OCZ forum where it was stated:

Take note here, partition alignment with SSD is the most important factor you have to deal with when installing your new drive. Tuning the drive’s alignment can add 30 to 50% more performance so failing to apply the correct alignment could ruin the experience you have with the drive.

There is one crucial SSD issue besides file system speed decline (which is not so noticeable in comparison to traditional HDD). It is the SSD memory cells degradation after some amount of write operations. So if partitions on SSD are misaligned beside downgraded system speed you put your solid state drive in danger. After partitions alignment, PAT eliminates all redundant read/write operations and thus provides speed boost and grants the SSD a longer lifetime.

Is SSD alignment an issue for you? Find out here. Read the rest of Why Misaligned Partitions are a Problem for SSD.