Guided Tour of Defrag.NSF 3.00 Features - Part 1

In this "Guided Tour" series of blog posts we will take a feature-by-feature, in-depth look at all the cool options available in the new Defrag.NSF 3.00. We will uncover the great new features and configuration options we have been working on. As we revealed in our previous Blog post Defrag.NSF is now optimised for integration with the DBMT in Domino 9, including a dedicated DBMT panel. Any Domino Administrator wanting to maximise server performance, greatly simplify and optimise database maintenance, ease administrative overhead and reduce wear/tear on Servers and Backup hardware will absolutely love what Defrag.NSF 3.00 has to offer.

Starting from the start we will work through the feature set and explain all the different options and settings available. Hopefully even long-time users will find some useful tips in this series and even new info on features they weren't aware of. We built Defrag.NSF to be a "set and forget" type product if that's how the administrator wanted to approach it, and sometimes that can allow a lot of the "hidden" cool features slip through the knowledge cracks and never get looked at. Anyway lets begin the Tour:

Everything can be configured from within the database itself, using the good 'ol admin client. On opening Defrag.NSF you will see the different Views available at the left side.

This product is fully supported, so if you need Support, just click the "Request Support" button and we'll help you.

The Views
Each view will show the cataloged databases, each as an individual document.

By Fragments view.

The respective columns report fragment count, database path, database size and the last time the Defrag process ran on the database.
The Defrag, Fixup and Compact columns will display a Green tick to indicate which databases have been flagged for the respective maintenance task during the next Defrag.NSF maintenance run. The databases are flagged according to how you have configured the Selection Methods on the Technical Settings Document.

Health Index view.

The main feature of this view is the “Health Index” column. The remaining columns are the same as the “By Fragments” view.

What we call "Health Index" is a ratio of the number of fragments for the size of a particular database.

The idea being that a very large database with 1000 fragments may actually be healthier (ie, less performance hit) than a really small database with 500 fragments. It allows you to focus on your best return on effort for defragging (This is useful when you are just starting out with Defrag.NSF and there is an extremely large number of databases to work on).

The Health Index allows the maintenance to be applied in a controlled step-wise manner to slowly get things back into shape without wasting the time and resources required to defrag large databases with just a couple of fragments. This is especially useful in the initial stages of running Defrag.NSF in a difficult environment. The number of databases targeted using the Health Index can be controlled via the Selection Method, the setting below would allocate maintenance to the top 500 databases in the next run.

 By Name view.

The first column in this view lists the databases in alphabetical order by database path name, the remaining columns are also available in the other views. If Freespace Monitoring is enabled for a database, you will see the results displayed in the 3 columns on the far right.

Next in the series, we'll be looking at the Maintenance buttons and what task each one allows the administrator to carry out

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