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This is yet another article written for the database administrator which claims to have universal importance to all server administrators.

In our environment, random I/O is not the primary concern. Working with photographic images ranging in size from hundreds of megabytes to a few gigabytes, sequential read/write performance is key.

For sequential read/write performance, server system memory and network transport (we use bonded gigabit Ethernet at server and workstation) become highly critical to serving files to workstations. Indeed, workstation disk performance can be a limiting factor, as the server can push files faster over the network than the workstation can save them.

Other factors are clearly important as well. I mention these as they are ignored in the article.