Performance impact

All else being equal (same IDA Configuration) a Concentrated Dispersal system will have a lower maximum throughput and IOPS capacity. However, performance reduces linearly with the reduced hardware in deployment. For example, a 36-wide IDA across 36 Slicestor devices is expected to have 9 times the maximum performance compared to a 36-wide IDA across 4 devices.

Note however, that other factors can serve to reduce performance further in a Concentrated Dispersal system. For example, it is common to use Embedded Accessers with Concentrated Dispersal systems, as it further reduces the number of devices required in the deployment. With Embedded Accessers, each Slicestor device functions as both a storage node and as an Accesser appliance. When writing through an Embedded Accesser, this imposes additional resource requirements (on the CPU, network, memory, etc.) and will reduce the maximum possible throughput of the system compared to using dedicated Accesser devices.