How Many IOPS Is Enough?

SNIA’s SSSI channel webcast of “How Many IOPS Is Enough?” was a smash success!  Now you can listen to an on demand rebroadcast.

Even though there are lots of SSDs on the market today offering IOPS (I/Os Per Second) performance in the thousands to hundreds of thousands (with indications that future models will offer speeds in the million-IOPS range), and HDDs that support from tens to hundreds of IOPS depending on spindle speed and interface, not every application can use the extreme performance of high-end SSDs, and some may not benefit from high IOPS at all.

Since performance is tied to cost, users can save money if they understand how many IOPS the system really needs.  “How Many IOPS is Enough?” draws from the recent study by Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis that examined what makes an application require high IOPS and which profiled applications according to their needs.

In the webcast, you will also learn how to take part in an exciting SSSI project – the Workload I/O Capture Program, or WIOCP, a simple tool that captures software applications’ I/O activity by gathering statistics on workloads at the user level (IOPS, MB/s, response times queue depths, etc).  The WIOCP helps users to identify “Hot Spots” where storage performance is creating bottlenecks. SNIA SSSI hopes that users will help the association to collect real-use statistics on workloads by uploading their results to the SNIA website. Details on WIOCP can be found at tinyurl.com/tryWIOCP.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *