Security Appliance disk alignment

We have several S100V appliances (v8.0.5 build 075) deployed on VMWare 5.1. We notice that the disk alignment is not optimised for a shared-disk virtual environment, the partition offset is at sector 63 (32256 bytes) so disk activity does not align to the underlying 4k byte boundary. We have used a NetApp tool (mbralign) to test aligning the partitions correctly but the appliance detects the change and gives an error, despite successfully booting. These virtual appliances were deployed from OVA as per standard practice and Cisco documentation.
Can anyone provide an alternate way to deploy the S-series appliances, that results in a correctly aligned partition structure? Or alternatively, a way to correct the alignment of the existing appliances?
We know that Cisco is aware of both the need for correct alignment, and the effects of poor alignment, as they make mention of it in documents related to other virtual appliances such as CUCM and UCS. Ref: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/rel_notes/9_1_2/CUCM_BK_C9FFFCD0_00_cucm-release-notes-912/CUCM_BK_C9FFFCD0_00_cucm-release-notes-912_chapter_011.html#CUCM_RF_CFB78EC7_00 and http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/ucs_vspex_esxi5_vm250.html#wp598003
These appliances are very heavy devices in terms of disk I/O, and as a result of the incorrect partition offset the I/O load is magnified considerably.
Any help appreciated, even if it is just confirmation of the issue at other sites.

Hi.
Something is fishy alright. If we divide the StartingOffset with the Blocksize we should get the starting sector. Which should be 63 for Windows 2003 or 2048 for Windows 2008.. You have 32. I would suggest that you read Alignment
changes in Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 from Ask the Core Team Blog.
Just of curiosity is this deployed with vmware, Xen or any 3rd party tool/platform?
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. Even if you are not the author of a thread you can always help others by voting as Helpful. This can
be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
Oscar Virot

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I wish I could send this directly to the Apple software engineer in charge of Disk Utility, but maybe there is someone on this Forum who is technically very savvy and would stake their reputation on their answer.
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Perhps I did not make myself clear (or you misread a verb or two).
I did read your link,but it does not clarify the technical design of this software.
The Erase button lets you "Zero Out All Data", but data to me is a file (whether or not it is readable in the directory of not). Whereas Free Space can be either virgin territory or trashed files with the directory info stripped clean. So why do you say that Zero Out All Data would include virgin disk space when there was never data there ?
Also if Erase>Zero Out All Data "writes zeroes to every byte on the drive", and projects an erase time of 13 hours, then why does it estimate 2 days 9 hours when I choose Erase Free Space>Zero Out Deleted Files? (Which further confuses the reader with this Apple description: It writes zeroes over the UNUSED space in the disk.) (My capitalization for emphasis). Yes, parts of it are CURRENTLY not being recognized, but it IS filled with data (as opposed to the virgin space being filled with no data).
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And though you may be right, I alwatys ask. "Would you bet your child's or your mother's life on your answer?"
That's why I left it an Open question for the moment ... hoping to also snag an Apple Moderator.
Thank you for your help though.

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Restore the old files by removing the accounts.. ie press and hold reset.. once you go back to a reset all files are available again anyway so the security is illusionary.
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