I recently discovered a free tool that will assist VMware admins in detecting and resolving VMware VM partition alignment issues.  VM partition alignment is critical in reducing i/o at the storage array level for VMware infrastructure.  Essentially poorly aligned VM partitions can double or triple the i/o cycles to the storage array.  If VM admins ignore this problem or are unaware of the issue, this problem can snowball and consume excessive storage i/o limiting the number of VM’s that can be supported on a VM infrastructure.

The free tool is called UberAlign.  UberAlign will scan your VM infrastructure for misaligned VM’s and optionally re-align the VM to the correct offset.

More information about UberAlign can be found here.

More detailed information about VMware VM alignment issues can be found here.