Multiple Outstanding I/Os

The ioDrive is more like a storage controller than like a single disk. Like other storage controllers, it performs best when multiple requests are outstanding.

The primary methods for generating outstanding I/Os are

• Using multiple threads
• Using multiple processes
• Using asynchronous I/O, or AIO

For small-packet IOPS-geared applications, having multiple threads or outstanding AIO requests generally yields a significant performance improvement over a single thread. For larger block size bandwidth- oriented applications, having multiple outstanding I/Os is less important.

For additional details on threads and AIO, see the following references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_I/O