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Systems & Data Center · Intermediate

Storage Latency

The time taken to complete a single storage I/O request, usually measured in milliseconds or microseconds.

Definition

Latency strongly affects application responsiveness. All-flash arrays commonly deliver sub-millisecond latency, while sustained latency above roughly 20 ms often indicates contention. Hypervisors report device and kernel latency separately.

Example

esxtop shows DAVG of 35 ms, pointing to slowness at the array rather than in the host.

Exam tip

High latency with low IOPS usually indicates a bottleneck, not a lack of demand.

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