Defraging DFS and DB clusters

[Don]

Good Afternoon:

Is it safe to use the Microsoft Disk Defragmenter
utility on Windows 2000 server clusters? Our database and
DFS cluster's data resides on a remote, redundant SAN. If
safe, any help or hints on best practices would be
appreciated. Thank you for your time.

 

[earl]

Since you are connecting to a SAN I would assume you are
running some type of RAID on the SAN. From a compaq course
I took, the instructor said it was a waste of time to
defragement a RAID volume, because the RAID controller
presents a virtual disk to the os and handles the
placement of the actual data on the drive. Also that the
RAID controller is suppose to store the data chunks in a
fashion that is optimal for the controller to retreive the
data.