Thursday, September 25, 2008

Here, there, anywhere - busting the myth of Compact as a defrag tool!

Compact does NOT defragment a database.

Compact consolidates freespace WITHIN a database, it has nothing to do with file fragmentation. In fact using a Compact -C is likely to result in a fragmented file.

A Domino NSF is just a file on disk. As Domino grows a database it asks the operating system for space - this additional piece of the NSF file can be anywhere on the disk - anywhere!

I hate reading articles that part way through say 'continued on page X' - they are a waste of time. Well imagine reading a book that said 'continued on page X' after each paragraph. That's what it is like. It would be slow, painful and time wasting.

Defragment your databases, reduce your I/Os and improve your throughput. Spend less time looking and more time doing.

Repeat after me, COMPACT DOES NOT DEFRAGMENT A DATABASE.

How healthy are your servers ? go to Defrag.NSF and check.

4 comments:

Chris Whisonant said...

Thanks for the tip. I've discussed this at my blog on several occasions. This technique sounds very similar to something I described here back in February. Thanks for getting a tool out to do this!

Adam Osborne said...

Thanks Chris. Please give Defrag.NSF a try, I think you are going to love it.

Chuck Hauble said...

Hi Adam, The defrag tool is really cool.. I'm having some trouble with the trial copy whats the best way to ask questions? The trouble I'm having is that the recatalog function doesn't pick up all of the databases

Adam Osborne said...

Hi Chuck, just shot you an email so we can sort this out. Cheers.