Dell PowerEdge T630 - Manual (Page 10)

10 512e and 4Kn Disk Formats
There are a number of software utilities (such as Diskpart and Paragon) that are widely used by system
builders, OEMs, value-added resellers, and IT managers for aligning partitions when the operating system
doesn't offer or support partition alignment out of the box. Systems today typically consist of multiple hard
drive partitions. This means that each partition on the hard drive must be created with 4K-aware
partitioning software to make sure proper alignment and performance is ensured.
5.3 Managing 4K sectors in the Linux environment
The key strategies in managing the transition to 4K sectors in a Windows environment also apply to Linux.
Table 4 Linux support
Drive formats
Reported logical
sector size Reported physical
sector size
Linux version with support
512-byte Native, 512n 512 bytes 512 bytes All Linux versions
Advanced Format, 512e,
AF, 512-byte Emulation 512 bytes 4096 bytes RHEL 6.1*
SLES 11 SP2**
Ubuntu 13.10
Ubuntu 12.04.4
Advanced Format, AF, 4K
Native, 4Kn 4096 bytes 4096 bytes RHEL 6.1*
SLES 11 SP2**
Ubuntu 13.10
Ubuntu 12.04.4
* Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux ® 6 supports 4K-sector devices as data disks. 4K-sector boot disks are supported in UEFI
mode only.
**SUSE
® Linux ® Enterprise fully supports 4KB/sector drives in all conditions and architectures with one exception. The
4KB/sector hard disk drives are not supported as a boot drive on x86_64 systems booting with a legacy BIOS.
Changes have been made to both the Linux kernel and utilities to support Advanced Format drives. These
changes ensure that all partitions on Advanced Format drives are properly aligned on 4K sector
boundaries. Kernel support for Advanced Format drives is available in kernel versions 2.6.31 and above.
Support for portioning and formatting Advanced Format drives is available in the following Linux utilities:
• Fdisk:"GNU"Fdisk"is"a"command"line"utility"that"partitions"hard"drives."Versions"1.2.3"and"above"
support"Advanced"Format"drives.
• Parted:"GNU"Parted"is"a"graphical"utility"for"partitioning"hard"drives."Versions"2.1"and"above"support"
Advanced"Format"drives.
5.4 VMware support
The key strategies in managing the transition to 4K sectors in a Windows environment also apply to
VMware. VMware is planning to release a 512e-aware operating system in late 2013 and a 4Kn-aware
operating system in 2015.
Table 5 VMware support
Operating system 512e 4Kn
VMware ESXi 5.5 (Q4 2013) Planned in 2015