Hardware Upgrades versus Defragmentation

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By following the above steps, performance on Windows NT, 2000, and XP can be maintained at a high level by keeping files and free space consolidated. As shown in the NSTL tests, it makes sense to keep Windows networks regularly defragmented. It may even provide a more economical alternative to an upgrade of system hardware, as discovered in an analysis by International Data Corporation (IDC) (Exhibit 8). According to Paul Mason, Vice President of Infrastructure Software Research at IDC, defragmenters are rising sharply in popularity as people realize that defragmenters often can deliver performance gains comparable to those for hardware upgrades at a fraction of the cost. He believes that this might be related to the apparently diminishing returns that hardware upgrades frequently provide.

Exhibit 8: IDC Comparison of Hardware Upgrade Costs versus Defragmentation Gains

	No. of Workstations	New Workstation Costs ($)	Staff Costs ($)	Total Staff and Workstation Costs ($)
Scenario #1	10	30,000	2,300	32,300
Scenario #2	1,000	3,000,000	230,000	3,230,000
Scenario #3	5,000	15,000,000	1,150,000	16,150,000
Source: International Data Corporation, Framingham, Massachusetts, 2000.

To compare hardware upgrade costs to defragmentation, IDC assumed a corporate average of hardware replacement every three years at an average cost of $3000 per workstation. After three years of operation, the original workstations would have steadily deteriorated in performance, due in no small part to fragmentation. With residual value estimated at 10 percent, this works out to $2700 over three years, or $900 annually per machine. IDC assumed that at the end of the three-year term, better workstations with faster CPUs, more RAM, and bigger hard drives could be purchased for the same price as before — around $3000. Further, the study carefully considered the time it takes to remove an older model and install a new one. In-depth investigation reveals that it takes approximately 2.5 hours to deinstall a workstation and another 3.25 hours to put in the new one, IDC rounded this up to six hours for each replacement at $40 per hour for IT staff. To simplify matters, the study did not take into account any expenses from the server side.

Exhibit 9 provides a summary of IT and new workstation costs. For the defragmenter side of the equation, IDC used Executive Software's Diskeeper for purposes of comparison, with NT workstation licenses costing $49.95 per workstation and $259 per server (list price at the time). IT time was computed at approximately two hours per month due to central controls and automatic Set It and Forget It Scheduling. Exhibit 9 also summarizes the cost of the defragmentation software as well as the cost of IT staff time. Based on these figures, IDC concluded that defragmentation may be able to delay the frequency of hardware upgrades by up to two years while at the same time delivering considerable savings. According to the IDC report, "As the level of server and workstation deployment increases, the cost effectiveness of defragmentation increases exponentially."

Exhibit 9: License and Installation Costs of Defragmentation Software

	No. of Servers	No. of Workstations	License Cost ($)	IT Staff Cost ($)	Total Costs ($)
Scenario #1	1	10	648	960	1,608
Scenario #2	10	1,000	23,000	960	23,960
Scenario #3	25	5,000	90,000	960	90,960
Source: International Data Corporation, Framingham, Massachusetts, 2000.

Total Cost of Ownership of Manual versus Network Defragmenters

This IDC study also reinforced the data provided earlier regarding the WDD versus a third-party defragmenter by using the same three scenarios as in the hardware comparison for the software comparison. Analysts allowed one hour to defragment server and workstation disks, taking into account the time it takes a system administrator to schedule the activity, move to the location, and perform the task on a weekly basis (at a rate of $40 per hour). Exhibit 10 highlights the high cost of manual defragmentation for each scenario. Network defragmentation, on the other hand, permits a system manager to schedule, monitor, and control defragmentation throughout the enterprise from one console. As well as offering significant savings, it allows system managers to efficiently schedule automatic defragmentation to maintain peak performance of the network. IDC found that centralized controls and automatic scheduling meant that system managers needed only two hours per month to adjust any defragmentation schedules. Regardless of the size of the network, therefore, annual IT costs worked out to be $960, considerably less than when employing manual defragmentation tools. Additionally, IDC made the point that TCO will be dramatically lowered when a network defragmenter is used to enforce an exact maintenance schedule across the enterprise. The report concluded: "Even though the actual numbers may vary from customer to customer, when considering the significant impact on TCO, it is difficult to find any argument to position manual defragmentation over network defragmentation."

Exhibit 10: Costs of Manual Defragmentation for Each Scenario

	No. of Servers	No. of Workstations	Annual Staff Hours	Total Staff Costs ($)
Scenario #1	1	10	572	22,880
Scenario #2	10	1,000	52,520	2,100,800
Scenario #3	25	5,000	261,300	10,452,000
Source: International Data Corporation, Framingham, Massachusetts, 2000.

Uptime Guarantee

The reports cited above demonstrate the performance impact of fragmentation. Conclusive evidence also exists that fragmentation is a primary factor in system unreliability; therefore, regularly defragmenting every server and workstation on the network is more than just common sense. It leads to greatly improved system stability and uptime, as well as a substantial reduction in help desk calls. And as networkwide defragmentation is fully automated, it represents one of the simplest, yet most effective, maintenance actions — one that equates to hard dollars in IT savings. Given the variety of problems that fragmentation causes — performance degradation, slow boot times, computers not booting up, slow or aborted backups, file corruption, data loss, crashes, hangs, errors in programs, memory issues, and a reduction in hard drive longevity — regular automated defragmentation is an obvious and proactive means of minimizing downtime and instability. Systems that are fragment free and are kept fragment free transparently by an effective network defragmenter will experience optimum levels of stability and reliability. Regular defragmentation, in conjunction with IT best practices, is a smart way to maintain uptime at a high level.

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