We all know that once a disk (or storage system for that matter) gets introduced into use, the performance degrades due to fragmentation of files. This seems to be why disk defragmentors are in fairly wide use on Windows boxes. And they do increase the performance substancially. As an aside, I haven't heard of many defragmentors in the Unix/Linux area.

Despite the claimed WAFL protections for the NetApp, file fragmentation still will occur, especially with all the sparsely crated VMs. My question is does anybody do any sort of defragmention of such a storage system? Do you notice any measurable degration/improvement of either not doing/doing anything to address this situation? Does anybody do anything about it? If so what?

Thanks