Systems and methods for improving virtual machine performance

A system for improving virtual machine performance within a computing environment, the system comprising:

• a physical host server comprising a host operating system and a plurality of virtual machines each having a guest operating system;
• a physical datastore comprising a plurality of virtual machine disks associated with each of the plurality of virtual machines, wherein each virtual machine disk of the plurality of virtual machine disks is associated with a virtual machine of the plurality of virtual machines, each of the plurality of virtual machine disks comprising a plurality of partitions;
• and
• a management server in communication with the host server, the management server comprising a resize module configured, for each virtual machine, to:
• obtain a lock on the virtual machine;
• issue a first instruction to power off the virtual machine;
• while the virtual machine is powered off, (i) resize or (ii) align the plurality of partitions of the virtual machine disk without creating another virtual machine disk, wherein the resize module (i) resizes or (ii) aligns based at least in part on an optimization profile for the virtual machine;
• issuing a second instruction to power on the virtual machine;
• and
• remove the lock from the virtual machine.

Non-transitory computer storage comprising machine-executable instructions that when executed by a computing device cause the computing device to improve virtual machine performance within a computing environment, the machine executable instructions comprising instructions for:

• accessing an optimization profile for a virtual machine of a computing environment, the virtual machine associated with a virtual machine disk comprising a plurality of partitions, the virtual machine disk stored on a physical datastore, the optimization profile comprising information related to allocation or use of virtual machine storage;
• issuing a first instruction to power off the virtual machine;
• while the virtual machine is powered off, resizing the plurality of partitions of the virtual machine disk based at least partly on the optimization profile, the resizing comprising:
• copying a sequence of sectors of the plurality of partitions to new locations on the datastore;
• and
• issuing a second instruction to power on the virtual machine.