How Good is the “Free” or “Included” Product?

There have always been all kinds of “free” or “included” items, meant to sweeten the sale of a main product. For example, you buy a new home in a subdivision, and the kitchen appliances—oven, stovetop, microwave, dishwasher—are already built-in. It might also include, “free” a washer and a dryer. Or, you buy a new computer, and it has a built-in camera. On top of that, it may even include free video editing software.

The upside is that these items were free, or included in the overall price. The downside, however, is that you’re now stuck with trying to make them work for the functions you intend. Are those kitchen appliances going to be what you really need for cooking—or would it have been better if you’d been able to pick your own, after you’d thoroughly checked them out? Or, how good is that camera included with your computer going to be? Could you do a professional shoot with it? And, is it possible to perform a competent editing job with the free video software?

Chances are, these items are nowhere near what you actually require in terms of functionality and features.

The same holds true for a “free” or “included” defragmenter. Fragmentation—the splitting of files into pieces, or fragments, for better utilization of disk space—is the primary drain on computer system performance and reliability. If it is possible to obtain a fragmentation solution for free, and that solution does the job, it’s certainly a winning situation.

The problem, however, is that because of the many innovations in today’s computing environments—such as thin provisioning, replication, snapshots, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and deduplication, to name but a few—it takes more than a defragmenter, free or otherwise, to do the job. An optimization solution, which addresses a broader scope of issues than fragmentation only, is required.

Another issue is that even as a defragmenter, a free product has severe limitations and cannot address the enormous file sizes, voluminous drive capacities and high rates of fragmentation inherent in today’s systems.

A robust optimization solution addresses several aspects of file read and write I/Os in addition to fragmentation—a majority of which is prevented before it even happens. It includes  intelligent ordering of files for faster access, and other advanced technologies designed to automatically maximize system performance and reliability. Most importantly, it is truly up to the job of dealing with these important issues in today’s systems.

So carefully check out “free” or “included” items. Upon testing and inspection of features and functionality, you’ll find that you’d be better off paying the relatively inexpensive up-front cost, to save untold waste in time and money down the road.

Free Software: Not for the Big Time

There are many free utilities and applications out there, and if what you are doing is meant to be insignificant or small, they’re probably adequate. For example, there are a few free music recording apps available that will allow to you record multiple instruments and vocals to your computer, and then mix the results into a song. But if the resulting track is to be used for professional purposes, you’ll find it sorely lacking; you need Logic Pro, Pro-Tools or the like to even come close to competing in the major markets.

There are numerous free accounting programs—probably fine for keeping track of bake sale income or the like. But used in a company or corporation to track income, accounts payable, expenditures, profit and loss? Hardly. The same could be said for databases; a free one available for download won’t hold a candle to an Oracle or SQL when it comes to business use, and no IT professional would even consider it.

On the utilities side, there are free defragmenters. Unlike the examples given above, these may not even be worth it for the home user, simply due to the nature and quantity of today’s fragmentation. But that argument aside, it is an obvious truth, upon examination, that these freebies are definitely not meant for business or corporate use.

Fragmentation is the splitting of files into pieces (fragments) on a hard drive, to better utilize disk space. A defragmenter is meant to solve this problem by “re-assembling” these files back into a whole, or a nearly whole state. In the corporate environment, the levels of fragmentation are far beyond the capabilities of a free defragmenter to accomplish this task.

A free defragmentation utility must also be scheduled; it has been discovered by anyone having to actually try this that scheduling is practically impossible in today’s enterprises simply because systems are constantly up and running.

But the primary problem with a free defragmenter is that, today, it takes more than defragmentation to truly tackle the resource loss associated with I/O reads and writes. Multi-faceted optimization is, by far, the best approach.

Technology is now available that, instead of defragmenting, actually prevents a majority of fragmentation before it ever occurs. This same technology also orders files for faster access, and performs a number of other vital actions that greatly increase performance, and maximize reliability. All of these functions occur completely automatically, with no scheduling or other operator interference required.

Free software is definitely not meant for the big time. This is doubly true in addressing fragmentation.

Free Defragmenter: For the Enterprise?

When most people buy a large-screen TV, they usually do so in an effort to bring the experience they might have in a movie theater to their homes. And bringing it home is usually somewhat of an event: everyone plops down on the couch, perhaps popcorn is made, and the new acquisition is fired up. Everyone waits...and there it is! The giant, lifelike crystal-clear picture that everyone wanted!

But something is wrong. While that picture is amazing, it is accompanied by sound that is tinny and has no depth at all. This is because the family, in their rush to expand their home entertainment experience, didn’t stop to think that you not only see great things on such a television, you also hear them. Now all they have for sound is the tiny free built-in speakers—never meant to be a high-quality sound experience matching the picture. If they’re going to really do it right, they’ll need to go back out and get a good quality surround-sound system.

Moving over into the field of computers, a similar thing could be said about a free or included defragmenter. A computer system in an enterprise is robust, can store and retrieve millions of files, and can serve them up quickly from servers to users near-instantly. High-tech innovations such as SAN, NAS, and virtual machines are consistently brought on board to increase that experience and functionality.

File fragmentation, however, can slow that experience and functionality to a crawl. In order to address it, an enterprise-ready fragmentation solution needs to be brought to bear. If not, fragmentation compounds unchecked—and all of its symptoms such as slow performance, unexpected hangs and freezes and reduced hardware life continue unabated.

Much like the tiny speakers were never meant to provide a true home theater experience, the free defragmenter was never meant to address fragmentation on an enterprise level. It must either be run manually or be scheduled—neither of which are options in today’s enterprise, with servers that must remain up and running 24/7.  Additionally, it will be found that this defragmenter does not have functionality to keep up with the hectic rates of fragmentation found in today’s business environments. 

The only true solution for an enterprise is one that prevents a majority of fragmentation so that it never impacts the system or users. It never requires scheduling or any kind of intervention from IT staff—which leaves them free to address more urgent priorities. Best of all, maximum performance and reliability are assured.

The Liabilities of Free Software

Anything obtained for free can certainly seem like a benefit. And sometimes it is, like the rare time when you stumble upon someone giving away a certain item that turns out to be worth much more than originally suspected, or to be much more useful than at first glance. In the case of software, however, free isn’t necessarily good, for a number of reasons.

There are different varieties of free software. The variety that is actually free, with no strings, may or may not suit your needs. Many times it doesn’t, and when actually examined, the reasons for this are pretty obvious. Prime among them is the fact that you can’t hire great software engineers for free, nor obtain the necessary development and testing hardware. This takes money. Hence, free products built by an individual or developed through an open-source scenario don’t have the robust engineering that has gone into paid-for software.

Another prime reason such software may not work well is that the developers involved, while well-intentioned, are not necessarily experts in the area the software is designed to address. Companies that specialize in, say, anti-virus, have the budget to pour into researching the most effective ways to combat computer viruses using the least amount of computer resources. They are also able to stay constantly abreast of the latest viruses and update their users. Or, developers that are expert in and focus on defragmentation have found ways to keep systems free of system-crippling file fragmentation, and will consistently be on top of operating system changes and anything else that affects the efficiency of their product.

The above reason can also apply to software companies attempting to be a “one size fits all,”  designing and selling software in areas they are not necessarily expert in simply in an effort to retain customers that have purchased their other products.

Another variety of free software is free trials. These can be more helpful, especially if all features are available. They are not always, though, so it is advisable to check. And in any case, they’ll almost always have time limitations on them. Eventually, you do better to purchase the full version of the product.

In finding the right software, the best advice that can be given is, free or not, check the functionality. Make sure it has the features that you actually need. Seek out users that have used the product through personal contact or through forums. If you can find something that genuinely does the job for free, great. But most of the time, you’ll find that purchasing a full version of a product from a company expert in the area you’re aiming to address, will be your safest and, in the long run, your most economic choice.

Eliminating Waste of Computer Resources

Up until fairly recently, we have been a wasteful society. Cutting down forests, piling trash into landfills, burning as much energy as we could possibly consume—these have been the indexes of our lifestyles. It is only in the last few years that we as a culture have begun to realize that eventually such waste comes back to haunt us in the worst ways imaginable, and how vital conservation of resources is to our survival.

Computer resource management has paralleled the trend in waste. A relatively short time ago, “more power” was the mantra of computing—with no regard whatsoever to the burning of energy. As hardware prices dropped, hardware resources could be added and wasted without a thought, just as long as the system was kept up and running as efficiently as possible.

Today, most of us have realized the errors of our ways. Form factors have shrunk to be able to accommodate data and processes that used to require ten times as many resources. Technology has now evolved so that servers can be launched without any extra hardware whatsoever. Computers have become far more energy efficient so that the same or even more work can be accomplished using less.

One area of waste in computer resource management still being addressed is the waste of I/O resources. This particular type of waste has significant ramifications including waste of drive space, wasted hardware purchases, waste of hardware in general, and even waste of manpower.

Such waste comes about when files are left in a fragmented state and not properly optimized. Fragmentation is the splitting (fragmenting) of files into thousands or tens of thousands of pieces, in order to better utilize drive space. Many extra I/O requests are required to read—and to write—files that exist in such a state. Additionally, processes take far longer, users have to wait, and performance generally suffers.

While defragmentation for a long time was the only method of dealing with these problems, today’s complex technological innovations, along with enormous volume and file sizes and highly increased rates of fragmentation, make simple defragmentation outmoded.  Optimization technology now exists to maximize performance while eliminating wasted disk I/O activity. A majority of fragmentation can now be prevented, making it a non-issue, and file optimization and other solutions are combined to make a total solution.

With this technology utilized in all enterprises, the waste of I/O resources is eliminated altogether. It is one major step in our overall conservation of computer resources.

When “Free” Actually Costs More

This might have happened to you: You’re off on a resort vacation that you’ve looked forward to for months, in some tropical paradise. You’re dreamily exploring the resort on the first day, and you come across a person who offers you a free champagne brunch, for you and your spouse. You think, great! A free high-end meal! When you get there, though, you realize how free it isn’t. The food is great—but you have to sit there for two hours listening to a sales pitch on condo sharing. And for the rest of your vacation, some salesman is pursuing you all over the resort, popping up every time you turn around, trying to close you on buying into his “great plan.” That “free brunch” was anything but—it put a serious damper in your dream vacation, which you paid substantial money to take.

In the world of computing, the same could be said for a free or inexpensive defrag utility. Yes, it costs little to nothing at the outset—but defragmentation is a serious performance problem, and soon you’re going to have to run that utility. The first problem you’re going to have is, it needs to be scheduled. Most corporate systems need to be up and running constantly, so finding a time window in which to schedule defragmentation is a major problem. And, the time that the system is offline is the first major cost of the free or inexpensive utility.

When you finally can schedule and run it, you find out that it runs, and runs, and runs, consuming system resources the whole while, and never seems to actually complete a defrag job. If you add up the number of hours that IT staff have spent trying to get useful work out of this utility, you’ll come across the second major cost of this utility.

There are third-party solutions to fragmentation that are far more efficient. In fact, technology has now evolved to the point that a majority of fragmentation can actually be prevented before it even occurs—completely automatically, and with no impact on system resources. The I/O resources required to defragment files after they have already been fragmented are saved, and peak performance is constantly maintained.

Now, compare the price of the of the free or “low-cost” utility to the third-party solution. There is an initial cost for the third-party solution—but once it is installed and running, fragmentation is basically a thing of the past. The net result: the bargain utility actually costs far more.