|
This article Applies to all Windows products.
In order to have the best disk performance in the Guest OS the Disks should be aligned to the NetApp storage system. In order to accomplish alignment you will need to align the disk before you install the operating system on it.
WARNING, DO NOT PERFORM THIS TASK IF YOU HAVE ANY DATA ON THE DISK YOU WANT TO KEEP OR HAVE AN OS INSTALLED ALREADY!
DOING SO WILL FORMAT THE DISK!
There are different methods to align you boot disk for windows. Below is one of the methods available.
First you will need a WinPE boot disk that has the DiskPart command as pat of its package.
For more information on WinPE you can view the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment
Download a WinPE boot disc and boot the VMware Virtual Machine with it. Once loaded follow the instructions below to align.
-
CMD>diskpart
-
DISKPART> list disk (disks should be listed)
-
DISKPART> select disk # (This selects the disk drive)
-
DISKPART> list partition (This step should result in a message stating “There are no partitions on this disk to show.” This message confirms the disk is blank)
-
DISKPART> create partition primary align=64
-
Install Windows and then View the disk using “System Information” the Partition Starting Offset is now 65,536… 65,536 / 4096 = 16, and thus this file system is properly aligned to the storage blocks.
| 
