Here are some simple stats from the new block storage available over at DigitalOcean. Tested on a 1gb droplet.
[raw]hdparm -t /dev/sda[/raw] Reads
Timing buffered disk reads: 536 MB in 3.01 seconds = 178.15 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 586 MB in 3.01 seconds = 194.63 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 574 MB in 3.00 seconds = 191.32 MB/sec
[raw]hdparm -T /dev/sda[/raw] Cached Reads
Timing cached reads: 15090 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7551.96 MB/sec
Timing cached reads: 15056 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7535.53 MB/sec
Timing cached reads: 14810 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7411.46 MB/sec
[raw]time sh -c “dd if=/dev/sda of=ddfile bs=8k count=1000000 && sync”; rm ddfile[/raw] Writes
8192000000 bytes (8.2 GB) copied, 49.4442 s, 166 MB/s
real 0m49.523s
user 0m0.348s
sys 0m12.384s