The whole concept of aligning partitions is fairly new to me but it does make a lot of sense. I've never needed (or at least known that I needed) to align paritions on NTFS volumes.
I recently ran the SQL 2005 BPA on a VM in an effort to maximize my success virtualizing an SQL server. The BPA told me that my partitions were mis-aligned. After some research it turns out that even NTFS volumes on standard raid hardware benefit from proper alignment.
I created a clone of my server to test aligned and non-aligned partitions. I'm currently running IOMeter for some quick initial tests but check this out......
I moved all my data from D to E (identical VMDK files on the same LUN), this took 5 minutes. I then re-partitioned D on a 64k offset. Moving the data back took 45 seconds.
It seems like this is a SIGNIFICANT performance issue. I'm going to get creative to put the C: drive of my templates on the 64k offset but I'm curious why I haven't seen any information regarding this. I've been tuning servers for a LONG time and I've never run into this information before.
If it was useful, give me credit
Jason White - VCP
