Defragmentation

All replies are appreciated. We have put our first client into our production cache database and we are looking at what kind of regular maintenance is needed. We were questioning whether we should defrag the database files using windows defrag program and whether we need to run the defrag for Globals regularly? Should we be doing these routinely , occasionally or not at all?

Bob Binstock · Dec 6, 2016

The section Defragmenting Globals in a Database (http://docs.intersystems.com/latest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=GSA_manage#GSA_defrag_databases_freespace) in the System Administration Guide says:

In general, it is not necessary to run defragmentation on any regular basis. Some workloads, however, particularly those that read large portions of a database sequentially, can benefit from having global blocks organized sequentially.

This section was carefully revised a couple of releases ago and that advice represents current wisdom about the operation. Defragmenting globals is preferred over OS-level defragmentation.

See that section also for information about scheduling the operation and other concerns.

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