A lot of the cloud is based on iSCSI, which, although “random access” time is relatively constant, still has an increased latency compared to local storage. As

A lot of the cloud is based on iSCSI, which, although “random access” time is relatively constant, still has an increased latency compared to local storage. As such, you definitely do want to benefit from things such as read-ahead, and designing your storage structures around these types of mechanisms yields significantly better results.