Paragon Alignment Tool (PAT)

Modern hard drives and other types of drives in which blocks of reading record of 4 Kb in size are used purchase the increasing popularity in the world. Nevertheless, these devices are distinguished sometimes by the low speed of work, the reason of what is in unstructured arrangement of logical partitions of rather physical structure of information storage. To avoid it, specialists of the Russian company Paragon Software offer the Paragon Alignment Tool (RAT) utility.

Being extremely simple in use, Paragon Alignment Tool performs the automatic analysis of a disk subsystem and rebuilds the logical partitions provided on a disk. Thus, the overall performance of the hard drive and efficiency of its work increases. For SSD drives the optimized arrangement of logical partitions is a key to life extension. In cases of use of RAIDs and virtual infrastructure and also their combinations Paragon Alignment Tool allows to increase many times reading record speed.

The technology which is the cornerstone of Paragon Alignment Tool already proved the efficiency, being on arms at the largest global manufacturer of hard drives Western Digital.

Paragon Alignment Tool is of the greatest interest to users of MS Windows 2000/XP and those who upgraded to newer versions of Windows by means of updating of the operating system. Also the utility will bring benefit to those who use in work with a disk subsystem applications for backup.

Paragon Alignment Tool 3.0 for ESX

The PAT ESX technology uses for alignment of sections at least places on a virtual disk, and in case of transaction interruption process of alignment is resumed without data loss. The Paragon Alignment Tool (PAT) utility for ESX, is developed for remote alignment of sections of the virtual systems. It is necessary for the PAT ESX utility a place minimum on a virtual disk for work (only 3 - 4 MB on the section) and the extra space for snapshots or copies of the processed volume is not required. If there is an unforeseen interruption of transaction of alignment of sections, process of alignment will continue without data loss, and recovery of information is not required. The utility supports operating systems of VMware of ESX, VMware of ESXi, vCenter and vSphere.

PAT ESX allows to manage with ease all range of transactions of alignment of sections of virtual disks. The utility is established on the virtual machine in the environment of ESX/i. Control is exercised in Windows XP SP3 OS + or later versions. PAT ESX provides remote access to all virtual disks for the purpose of check of their status and alignment of sections in the automatic mode. The utility allows the administrator to perform search in data warehouses, to select virtual machines, and then to be connected to virtual disks to define whether alignment of sections is necessary. If it is necessary, PAT will offer optimal adjustments of transaction.

Advantages of Partition Alignment Tool 3.0 for ESX

• Performance improvement of the virtual machine up to 300 percent.
• Remote control, management and alignment of sections for tens of virtual disks of different virtual machines (it is not required to install the utility on each virtual machine).
• Expense reduction on the equipment — will disappear need for special storage devices for carrying out migration.

Paragon Alignment Tool 3.0 for ESX functions

• Remote check, management and alignment of sections of virtual disks.
• The minimum of disk space is necessary for alignment of sections.
• It is not required to select an occasional seat on the server for storage of snapshots or copies of the processed volume.
• Transaction of alignment of sections can be continued after an unforeseen break (there is no need for recovery, data loss does not occur).
• Expanded settings of transactions of alignment of sections (the administrator can select either faster, or safer (but longer) the scheme of carrying out transaction).
• Work of PAT does not require access to the server with the rights of the root user (there is no need to create new accounts). The utility can work under the available user account with the administrator's rights.
• Execution of operations according to the schedule; VMware of ESX, VMware of ESXi and vSphere; and mechanism of change tracking of blocks (CBT).
• Possibility of setup of transactions of the utility of alignment of sections upon the demand of the user.

Premises of development of technology of alignment of sections

Virtual hard drives have the sector size similar to the size of the sector of the new disks Advanced Format on which non-optimal located sections quite often meet. Excess operations of reading/record are as a result performed that in turn seriously reduces overall performance and, in an implicit form, equipment service life. It belongs and to virtual hard drives — even normal migration of the virtual machine from one server of VMware of ESX on another can cause non-optimal arrangement of sections. The situation even more worsens when sections and on the hard drive of the host machine are incorrectly located and on virtual hard drives — the number of excess transactions of reading/record in this case doubles.

The PAT ESX utility is a part of a line of solutions for backup and recovery after failures which also includes Hard Disk Manager and Drive Backup. Visit the site Paragon Software Group to obtain the additional information about PAT for ESX.