Partition Alignment in ESX 3

I came across this article today while doing some research on using dd in a vmfs environment on partition alignment in ESX server. If you aren't familiar with the issues that can be caused by partition misalignment, it is most definitely a worthwhile read. If your head starts spinning in the first couple of sections and you feel like it's not worth the trouble, skip ahead to the benchmarking section at the end and I'm sure you'll reconsider.