SSD Performance has System-wide Effects

The impact of SSDs on I/O related performance in a server is dramatic. Unleashed from the mechanical limitations of spinning disks, a single server can perform 10s or 100s of thousands of I/O Operations per second, IOPS, instead of just a few thousand.  Without long I/O waits, processor, RAM and RAID controllers can all get much busier, but the impact on humbler pieces of Continue reading SSD Performance has System-wide Effects

Storage Sizing for Capacity and Performance

Or, How Many Eggs in One Basket? Huge storage systems are available today supporting large numbers of disks, allowing the creation of massive storage resources.  Storage Servers and storage enclosures suporting up to (60) 3.5″ disk drives are now common.  Filling those bays with 6TB disks yields a system with 360TB raw capacity – one third of a petabyte!  That is now an easy Continue reading Storage Sizing for Capacity and Performance