Disk Alignment Error -- Best Practices Analyzer

[Database Administrator]

I'm using BPA. On nearly every SQL Server BPA is reporting a "Disk Sector
[0] alignment of server xxx..." error. My SQL Servers reside on different
SANs. My SAN person opened a ticket with our SAN vendor who could not find a
problem. I opened a ticket with Microsoft SQL Server group who then passed
me to the Windows group. They had me run MSReports and send then all logs
from SQL Server and Windows and they can't see a problem or say why BPA is
throwing this error.

Anyone else having trouble with BPA? Is it known for throwing erroneous
errors ?

Is this just a known bug in BPA?

Thanks,
Moishe

[Database Administrator]

What is the alignment offset for each volume? You can see using the System
Information Applet. Drill down to Components | Storage | Disks.

The value is labeled Partition Starting Offset.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP




"Moishe Much" wrote in message
news:CAE29502-6045-4664-8E23-0C47710F3345@microsoft.com...
> I'm using BPA. On nearly every SQL Server BPA is reporting a "Disk Sector
> [0] alignment of server xxx..." error. My SQL Servers reside on
> different
> SANs. My SAN person opened a ticket with our SAN vendor who could not
> find a
> problem. I opened a ticket with Microsoft SQL Server group who then
> passed
> me to the Windows group. They had me run MSReports and send then all logs
> from SQL Server and Windows and they can't see a problem or say why BPA is
> throwing this error.
>
> Anyone else having trouble with BPA? Is it known for throwing erroneous
> errors ?
>
> Is this just a known bug in BPA?
>
> Thanks,
> Moishe

[Database Administrator]

Geoff,

It's set to 64.

Regards,
Moishe

"Geoff N. Hiten" wrote:

> What is the alignment offset for each volume? You can see using the System
> Information Applet. Drill down to Components | Storage | Disks.
>
> The value is labeled Partition Starting Offset.
>
> --
> Geoff N. Hiten
> Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
> Microsoft SQL Server MVP
>
>
>
>
> "Moishe Much" wrote in message
> news:CAE29502-6045-4664-8E23-0C47710F3345@microsoft.com...
> > I'm using BPA. On nearly every SQL Server BPA is reporting a "Disk Sector
> > [0] alignment of server xxx..." error. My SQL Servers reside on
> > different
> > SANs. My SAN person opened a ticket with our SAN vendor who could not
> > find a
> > problem. I opened a ticket with Microsoft SQL Server group who then
> > passed
> > me to the Windows group. They had me run MSReports and send then all logs
> > from SQL Server and Windows and they can't see a problem or say why BPA is
> > throwing this error.
> >
> > Anyone else having trouble with BPA? Is it known for throwing erroneous
> > errors ?
> >
> > Is this just a known bug in BPA?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Moishe
>
>

[Database Administrator]

64K, 64 bytes, what?


--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP


"Moishe Much" wrote in message
news:4A49FC88-1CA1-45E9-8EF2-226BBE73A85E@microsoft.com...
> Geoff,
>
> It's set to 64.
>
> Regards,
> Moishe
>
> "Geoff N. Hiten" wrote:
>
>> What is the alignment offset for each volume? You can see using the
>> System
>> Information Applet. Drill down to Components | Storage | Disks.
>>
>> The value is labeled Partition Starting Offset.
>>
>> --
>> Geoff N. Hiten
>> Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
>> Microsoft SQL Server MVP
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "Moishe Much" wrote in message
>> news:CAE29502-6045-4664-8E23-0C47710F3345@microsoft.com...
>> > I'm using BPA. On nearly every SQL Server BPA is reporting a "Disk
>> > Sector
>> > [0] alignment of server xxx..." error. My SQL Servers reside on
>> > different
>> > SANs. My SAN person opened a ticket with our SAN vendor who could not
>> > find a
>> > problem. I opened a ticket with Microsoft SQL Server group who then
>> > passed
>> > me to the Windows group. They had me run MSReports and send then all
>> > logs
>> > from SQL Server and Windows and they can't see a problem or say why BPA
>> > is
>> > throwing this error.
>> >
>> > Anyone else having trouble with BPA? Is it known for throwing
>> > erroneous
>> > errors ?
>> >
>> > Is this just a known bug in BPA?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Moishe
>>
>>

[o0_WeZ_0o]

Hi Geoff,

I am receiving the same problem. When BPA gave these errors I set up a project to resolve them. This involved recreating the Array's on our DS400 to be 64k stripe sizes for Each the SQL-Data and SQL-LOG arrays.

I reformatted the data and logs partitions on my SQL Server and created them using 64k bytes per cluster and set the starting offset to 1024k.

This means my:
Stripe size = 65536
File Allocation Unit Size = 65536
Starting Offset = 1048576

Thus if i calculate my values correctly, 1048576 divided by 65536 gives me an integer value of 16 which means my Partition Offset and Stripe Unit size are aligned.

Furthermore if I divide my Stripe Unit Size (65536) by my File Allocation Unit Size (65536), the integer value of 1 means it too is aligned.

So I can not understand why SQL BPA still complaining that my alignment is out???

I did not reformat the O/S partitions so they will still be using the server 2003 default offset of 32256, but surely BPA is only looking at the drives which house the MDF's and LDF's?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Ciao
WeZ