Defrag or not to Defrag

I have been reading many things on the internet and I wanted to create a thread asking my question here. We currently do all the re-indexing and show contig's etc to maintain my sql data and to ensure everything is good to go there.

My question is, what about the physical drive and data. We house our mdf's on a raid 1_0 and our ldfs on raid 5. I am wondering if I need to defrag these drives b/c if not am i impacting my I/O on that box. If so should I stop the sql service so that it does not corrupt SQL data? Any help on this topic would be great.

-patrick

IF the database files are set to 'Autogrow' and 'Autoshrink', you can get substaintial file fragmentation.

If you maintain your databases, and deliberately enlarge the files only rarely, then you may not have much file fragmentation.

If necessary to defrag the drives, I would prefer to stop SQL Server (and have recent backups).

Defrag for SQL Servers inside a Virtual Machine?

sorry for asking here, since there's no forum for Virtual Server

My question is

We have 2 SQL Server instances on 2 Virtual Machine/Servers (say VM1 and VM2), which resides on a real physical machine (say A)

Is there point in defragging VM1 or VM2's hard drive at all?

or should I just defrag on the physical machine A?

You want to make sure the VMs are down (stopped) then defrag the physical machine. That would be all you need.|||

that's what I thought anyway, first time I defragged without shutting VMs down, I got a blue screen on 1 VM

second time I defragged still without shutting VMs down, everything went smoothly

I guess it's safer to shut down the VMs anyway

Thanks for the answer

Default Versus Named Instance

I think I see what you ar asking.
Without a client side alias to make the ServerName\InstanceName format look
like a default instance, older MDAC versions (2.6 and lower, I think) cannot
connect to a named instance. This is client library issue, not an
application issue.
Geoff N. Hiten
Senior Database Administrator
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
"Matt Tinney" <matt.tinney@.css-security.com> wrote in message
news:eeAQaxv$GHA.4292@.TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> When makes an application require the use of a default SQL instance versus
> named instances? If named instances are allowed with an application, how
> does one specify the specific instance to use?
>
An alternative would be to have the server use a dedicated port for the name
instanced, as opposed to dynamic ports, and then specify that in the Data
Source parameter:
MyServer,11291
Anthony Thomas

"Geoff N. Hiten" <SQLCraftsman@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eo$acrbAHHA.2328@.TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> I think I see what you ar asking.
> Without a client side alias to make the ServerName\InstanceName format
look
> like a default instance, older MDAC versions (2.6 and lower, I think)
cannot[vbcol=seagreen]
> connect to a named instance. This is client library issue, not an
> application issue.
> --
> Geoff N. Hiten
> Senior Database Administrator
> Microsoft SQL Server MVP
>
> "Matt Tinney" <matt.tinney@.css-security.com> wrote in message
> news:eeAQaxv$GHA.4292@.TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
versus
>