Align partitions on the stripe Boundary for Linux and Windows to boost performance

Aligning partitions on the stripe Boundary can boost IO performance up to 20% depending on file system block size , stripe size and intensity of IO workload etc. Disk alignment issue exists for environment, in which all following factors are met

Disk: Hardware Raid(Including SAN)
Server: X86 32bit or 64bit PC server .
OS: Linux or Windows ( BSD, Solaris not investigated)

Terms:
- Sector Size: Normally 512 byte as industry standard to lower-format a single harddisk.
- Stripe Size: The smallest unit used by SAN, Hardware Raid and software Raid starting from 2 KB, in power of 2. but 32,64,128 is common stripe size
- Block Size: The smallest amount of disk space which can be allocated to hold a file for file system, ext3,NTFS is 4k by default

Issue:
Due to x86 architectures BIOS limitation, the first partition starts at 63 sector by default in Windows or Linux.
As a result, The partition doesn't align the Stripe Boundary, so there are chances that one FS block sits above 2 stripes, so one request involves 2 physical IOs. The chances can be calculated as (FS block size/ stripe size).so It is 100% for 4k FS block on 4K stripe size.

The offset should be multiple of stripe size, if you are not sure the stripe size, start at 1M should be safe.
Take 64K stripe size for example:
((Partition offset) * (Disk sector size)) / (Stripe unit size)

(63 * 512) / 65536=0.4921875
(128* 512) / 65536=1
So the partition should start 128 sector (65536 bytes) at least

Verify:
- Linux: fdisk -lu
$ fdisk -lu
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 37736684 18868311 83 Linux
- Windows:
Any version up to Windows 2003 are affected by default, Windows 2008 has fixed the issue

Fix:
- Linux:
Fdisk go to expert mode by type x then select b to adjust starting block
- Windows:
diskpart detailed in the Windows KB

Reference:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929491
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_partition_align.pdf
http://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=kb8190