1.5 Applicability Statement

The benefits of the structures defined in this document include:

  • The ability to represent a large virtual disk size up to 64 TB.

  • Support for larger logical sector sizes—up to 4 KB—for virtual disks, which facilitates the conversion of 4-KB sector physical disks to virtual disks.

  • Support for large block sizes— up to 256 MB—for virtual disks, which enables fine-tuning block size to match the I/O patterns of the application or system for optimal performance.

  • A log to ensure resiliency of the VHDX file to corruptions from system power-failure events.

  • A mechanism that allows for small pieces of user-generated data to be transported along with the VHDX file.

  • Optimal performance, through improved data alignment, on host disks that have physical sector sizes larger than 512 bytes.

  • Capability to use the information from the UNMAP command, sent by the application or system using the virtual hard disk, to optimize the size of the VHDX file.