INFRA-DEVOPS Contents

Disk Latency, IOPS, Throughput, Queue Depth

Troubleshoot storage performance using latency, IOPS, throughput, and queue depth with actionable thresholds.

On this page

Key Storage Metrics

  • Latency: how long ops take (most important for user experience).
  • IOPS: operations per second.
  • Throughput: MB/s.
  • Queue depth: pending ops; rising queues mean saturation.

Collect Evidence

iostat -xz 1 10 2>/dev/null || true
# key fields: r/s w/s, await, svctm (if present), %util

Spot Saturation

  • Sustained %util ~ 100% with rising await indicates saturated device.
  • High await + low util can still happen with remote/network storage issues.

Find Top I/O Processes

pidstat -d 1 10 2>/dev/null || true
iotop -oPa 2>/dev/null || true

Filesystem vs Device

df -hT
lsblk -f
mount | head

Failure Modes

  • Log storm: sudden write amplification fills disk and saturates I/O.
  • Compaction/backup: background jobs consume IOPS; latency spikes.
  • Queue collapse: apps time out, retry, and further increase load.

Mitigations

  • Throttle background jobs.
  • Move hot paths to faster disks; separate logs from data.
  • Reduce sync writes where safe; batch operations.