IOPS, or Input/Output Operations per Second, is a unit of measurement used in storage devices. The number of IOPS is greatly influenced by the access pattern (sequential or random) used, or, in other words, the way we read or write data to the disk. As such, in real-world applications it is often hard to calculate or predict the minimum amount of IOPS required. When a workload involves small I/Os (from 4KB to 16KB) the amount of random IOPS is usually the main limiting factor to consider in storage performance. Learn more about IOPS