What is IOPS?

IOPS is an acronym for input/output per second. The number of IOPS a storage device can perform is always a factor of:

  • The block size of the I/O (systems can do more IOPS with small block size transfers);
  • Read versus write pattern (most systems do faster reads than writes); and
  • Random versus sequential access patterns (most storage devices do much better with sequential data access compared to random data access ... RAM-based solid state disks perform well with random or sequential accesses).