The file system supports devices that use either a native 512 byte sector size or a native 4KB sector size.
The new 4KB disk drives can be separated into 2 classes: those that support I/O on non-4KB aligned disk boundaries and those that do not support non-4KB aligned I/O. When operating on a system with 4KB drives, the database only performs I/Os on blocks that are full 4KB aligned (in size and length), regardless of the class of the drive.
Vantage only supports a homogeneous alignment configuration throughout the entire system. On a given system, data on all storage devices is aligned or unaligned, and cannot be both. This also applies across cliques.