Performance Storage Overview

Performance storage fits the gap of fast and medium priced storage, I though it’s old name was more fitting “Consistent Performance Storage”.  This storage offers a “predictable levels of performance”, with IOPS ranging from 100 – 6,000.  I must highlight here that unlike most other storage type where IOPS will vary this offering will consistently (That’s why I like the old name) perform at or above your provisioned IOPS.

Performance Storage comes in 2 flavours

1. Block Storage is an iSCSI-based LUN that can be ordered with sizes ranging from 20GB to 12TB. The iSCSI connection is highly available through redundant, multipath I/O (MPIO). These volumes can be mounted to both Windows and Linux operating systems running on either bare-metal or virtual servers.
2. File Storage is an NFS-based share that can be ordered with sizes ranging from 20GB to 12T. These shares can be mounted on Linux operating systems running on either bare-metal or virtual servers.

The only option you get with this storage is the ability to set the IOPS to the exact speed you require, so you only pay for the speed you want.  If you select 500 IOPS it will be slightly cheaper than 1000 IOPS that might be overkill.  Remember Endurance storage you only get 3 IOPS options (0.25, 2 or 4 IOPS per GB) so you could be paying for additional speed that you’re not using.

That’s it, no other features like replication, or snapshotting, which is why this option comes in at a cheaper price per IOPS/GB than Endurance storage.

For further reading on Performance Storage please visit

http://knowledgelayer.softlayer.com/topic/performance-storage