File nsf fragmentation on SAN data drive volumes on mail servers

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

We have 6 wWin2k3 mail servers whose data drives are connected via fibre to 2 SAN systems using NTFS - approx 10TB of mail files. Each mail server has 3 disk volumes. User population approx 8000.

We have noticed when we run defrag analysis on any of the drives they register 99% file fragmentation. If we down 1 of these servers and run defrag (come back the next morning)we notice that the file fragmentation level drops a measly amount to around 90%. AFter a couple of days use it’s back at 99%.

Why is this?

Why can we not get this down to a decent %?

We have over 20% free disk space on each volume, and I am told the SAN firmware is the latest version.

Any thoughts/ideas welcome

2

Subject: SOLUTION!!!

We purchased a product called Defrag.NSF. It’s brilliant, and can actually defrag dbs with Domino server up and running.After 2 weeks of applying this our backup times dropped by 30% - 60%, and managers were calling up wanting to know if anything was wrong as Notes access speed had increased dramatically.

And it rtails at $199 per servers!