The VMware I/O blender is caused by multiple virtual machines generating random I/O at the hypervisor layer that bottlenecks storage systems. Adding more flash or spindles seems like the quick fix to this problem. The noise at the I/O blender is magnified by the inefficiency of how the Windows operating system writes data in virtual environments. As the Windows VM ages, the file system it manages segments files resulting in IOPS inflation, so what used to require one I/O to process a read or write can now take eight or more.
In this ChalkTalk video Storage Switzerland’s lead analyst George Crump and Condusiv’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Brian Morin discuss how Window’s inefficiency makes the I/O blender worse and how to fix it.
For more information on Condusiv’s Technology check out Storage Switzerland’s Briefing Notes:
Briefing Note: Stopping Virtualization’s Double Tax
Briefing Note: Physical Servers Matter – Diskeeper keeps them running like new
StorageSwiss.com - The Home of Storage Switzerland 