Arbitrary Shapes in AS 2005

I have recently returned from a performance tuning assignment at one of the largest AS-cube installations in the world. Working on such large installations always teach you a thing or two about the internal workings of the server products in use. Learning this new stuff is what I love the most about performance tuning. My colleague and me had a conference call with the people at Microsoft - and they have been really helpful about sharing their knowledge. I wanted to pass on some of it here.