I have been searching both on Unix.com and Google and have not been able to find the answer to my question. I think it is partly because I can't come up with the right search terms.
Recently, my virtual server switched storage devices and I think the problem may be related to that change. Previously when I did an "ls -ld" on a directory, the size column would report the number of files and/or directories contained in that directory. Now it is reporting a byte size. An empty directory is reporting 4096. If this is a configurable option, I would like to be able to request my admins adjust the option back to showing number of files & directories.
The "ls -ld" is giving you the output as it should be so if you were getting something else previously it may have been set up with an alias, function, or a different "ls" binary (ie. ${PATH} has changed). You should ask your admins if they've made any changes to your or the default environment.
The ls utility will show you the data that it gets from doing the equivalent of a stat() system call on the directory. Some filesystems report the size of a directory as the space the directory consumes; some report the size of a directory as the number of files in the directory. What you are seeing is that a different file system is being used on your new storage device than was used on the previous device.