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After reading the excellent Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server white paper, I want to make sure that an inherited SharePoint Server running on Windows Server 2003 is not suffering from misaligned partitions. The basic formula given is to divide the starting partition offset by the stripe size for the volume. In my case, volume is a RAID array running off a Dell PERC 5/i controller.

Question: How can I find the stripe unit size? Dell Openmanage seems to tell me everything except the stripe size, and according to the aforementioned article, Windows does not have a reliable way to determine stripe unit sizes.

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up vote 4 down vote accepted

You should make sure you're running the latest OpenManage, although maybe 5/i provides more info than 5/e.

I have a Perc 5/i and under OpenManage Server Administrator I can go System -> Storage -> PERC 5/i Integrated -> Virtual Disks and the very last column is Stripe Size.

I'm running OMSA v5.0.0.

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There it was! I am just blind. Thanks :) –  Sean Earp Jul 26 '09 at 0:09
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The default setup for PERC5i is 64bit stripes. I doubt you have changed anything there while installing.

BTW, OMSA 5.0 is ancient, you have to upgrade asap, and that probably means that the PERC firmware and the HDD firmware might need an update as well.

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