16,755 pts.
 VMWare, Windows, Deduplication, Defragmentation: Bad combo?
I was in a meeting the other day talking about our VMWare implementation and one of our Windows engineers brought up a comment that I wanted to throw out to everyone. He was told by a VMWare engineer that if you run Windows defragmenation on the virtual server while also are using de-duplication on the storage, it can cause corruption of data on the virtual server and/or the VMDK. He hasn't been able to get any documentation on this fact, so we are not sure if this is true or not. Does anyone have any experience with this or know of anyone who has? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.  

Software/Hardware used:
vmware, virtual server
ASKED: June 23, 2010  8:12 PM
UPDATED: July 29, 2010  6:30 PM

Answer Wiki:
Very unlikely you would be provided if such document existed. Defragmentation on SAN storage is considered a no-no even though you are performing it at the VM guest level. I think I recall a entry level windows administrator for a small construction company happen to perform disk defrag on his VM Guest Windows Server. He noticed after that point, he had various of issues related to backing this VM up. Fortunately for him, this was a server he had just deployed from a template so it was no big issue. Most SAN vendors would tell you never run defrag on volumes that live on their system so that's should be an indication NOT TO DO IT. Sorry I couldn't locate a document for it on this.
Last Wiki Answer Submitted:  July 29, 2010  6:30 pm  by  Aguacer0   8,120 pts.
All Answer Wiki Contributors:  Aguacer0   8,120 pts.
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I’ve never heard of such a thing.

 64,520 pts.