5. 5
Why IOPS are (now) painful
36 GB Hard Drive
~150 IOPS
4 TB Hard Drive
~150 IOPS
2000
..is like…
Which is
OK
NOW
Is like…
Which is
bad
6. 6
“The best IO is the one you don’t have to do.”
—Gene Amdahl
We tend to think that the phenomenon of engineers and
scientists being at the top of a company is something that started
with Bill Gates, and Steve Wozniak, but this just isn’t the case.
One of the first was Gene Amdahl who rocked the dominant IBM
– his previous employer. =
Editor's Notes
It’s because of the data problem.
And what is that?
Click: Well, it starts with exploding data growth. But this is nothing different than what everyone else is telling you.
Click: What they haven’t been telling you though is that the capacity problem because infinitely harder to solve for in light of the I/O gap. We all remember when the industry was shipping GB drives, right? Well, now we’re shipping 2-3-6TB drives! I know we don’t all have unlimited capital, but if we did, we could always just throw more hardware at it. The real issue is that in light of the 300% increase in HDD capacity, the performance has only grown about 10-15%. This is the real issue. We have an IOPS problem!
And it’s only getting harder to manage and more complex in the era of virtualization.
Click: So how do we define the data problem? There are 5 critical attributes: not just capacity – although that’s one; but also performance, protection, mobility and management in a virtualized environment.
It’s because of the data problem.
And what is that?
Click: Well, it starts with exploding data growth. But this is nothing different than what everyone else is telling you.
Click: What they haven’t been telling you though is that the capacity problem because infinitely harder to solve for in light of the I/O gap. We all remember when the industry was shipping GB drives, right? Well, now we’re shipping 2-3-6TB drives! I know we don’t all have unlimited capital, but if we did, we could always just throw more hardware at it. The real issue is that in light of the 300% increase in HDD capacity, the performance has only grown about 10-15%. This is the real issue. We have an IOPS problem!
And it’s only getting harder to manage and more complex in the era of virtualization.
Click: So how do we define the data problem? There are 5 critical attributes: not just capacity – although that’s one; but also performance, protection, mobility and management in a virtualized environment.
So why are IOPS so painful? Well, a dozen years ago we had 36 GB hard drives and they could handle about 150 IOPS.
Today, we have 2, 4 or even 6 TB hard drives, but they still do about 150 IOPS. While disk drive capacity has increased significantly we haven’t seen any increase on the performance side.
So think of that 36 GB hard drive as a glass with a 150 IOP straw, that same straw now has to work a lot harder for that 4 TB hard drive. If you can eliminate IOPS you can vastly improve system performance.
