"Now we are using VMWare Fusion and I think we can't use the ESXi tools to determine the alignment of the virtual disk to the underlying physical disk but it would be nice to know if there is a possibility to verify this alignment in Fusion too. Is there a possibility to determine the virtual disk alignment in Fusion?"
to check the virtual machine alignment no need to use esxi tools.... just use fdisk or windws tools.. will confirm... now how to check in the MAC i dont know...
Now "255 heads, 63 sectors/track" are LBA standards... and based on the disk size the cylinders may vary. In my blog in that example..for 40 gb it is 5221 and for 85 gb it is 10443... and this is normal..no need to worry..
Thanks for pointing... the SSD also... the Read Modify Write mechanism , needs additional Timing signals for Read/write but since it is SSD we cant see the delay or any performace impact.