What Does Input/Output Operations per Second Mean?
Input/output operations per second (IOPS) is the measure of how many input/output operations a storage device can complete within one second. It is a standard performance benchmark for hard drives, solid state drives, flash drives and even network attached storage (NAS) devices. Although IOPS is a common performance indicator, performance measures for the same device can vary from system to system based on other factors.
Techopedia Explains Input/Output Operations per Second
The most common performance characteristics that are measured are random and sequential operations. Sequential operations are generally related to access of stored operations in a contiguous way, usually associated with operations concerning large file sizes. Random operations, on the other hand, access locations in the storage device in a non-contiguous manner, which is related to small file sizes that are dispersed all over the storage medium.
There are the different characteristics that IOPS measures:
- Sequential Write IOPS: The average of the number of sequential write I/O operations that occur per second
- Sequential Read IOPS: The average of the number of sequential read I/O operations that occur per second
- Random Write IOPS: The average of the number of random write I/O operations that occur per second
- Random Read IOPS: The average of the number of random read I/O operations that occur per second
- Total IOPS: The total IOPS when performing mixed read and write operations
