IOPS versus Throughput

Question

1. What is the key difference between IOPS and Throughput in large data storage?
2. Does file size have an effect on IOPS? Why?

Answer 1

The Disk IOPS Describes the count of input/output operations on the disk per seconds, regardless block size.

The disk throughput describes how many data may be transferred per second, so the block size play a huge role upon calculating the throughput required by app

Let's consider as the sample the 3000 IOPS and SQL database engine, the block size in terms of db engine is called the page size and for SQL Server it's equal to 8 KB. If you wish to calculate the actual throughput, if the IOPS defined, you will end up with the formula below:

throughput = [IOPS] * [block size] = 3000 * 8 = 24 000 KB/s = 24 MB/s