Benchmark between cloud services
Nowadays there are many companies selling out cloud services. In this article, we can view, between Amazon and Rackspace, which company offers the best virtual machine with the minor cost.
Rackspace, Google Compute Engine and Amazon EC2 offer various types of virtual hardware and are used for various purposes. For example, you can buy a VM to host your blog or another application that you are coding.
These companies show some configurations about their products, but which is the most powerful server to process data or to host a database?
Some virtual machines components will be tested out with UNIX commands and you can view the results at the end.
After studying some tools to make a benchmark article about cloud servers I selected these commands:
- sysbench and hdparm
You can read more about these tools in Ohloh, its home page and others references at the end of this article.
Attention: These tests were collected on March 20th, 2013.
The same operating system and applications versions were used in all cases.
- S.O: Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS
- sysbench 0.4.12
- hdparm v9.37
- disk: 20 Gb on /
Virtual machine:
Rackspace
- type: 512 RAM (the first type of virtual machine on Rackspace)
- processor:
- vCPUs: 1
- AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 4170 HE (cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ‘model name’)
- memory: RAM 512 MB
- disk: no information
- cost by hour: $0.022
- More information about Rackspace Instances: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/
Amazon EC2 Micro
- zone: us-east-1c
- type: t1.micro
- processor:
- Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units (for short periodic bursts)
- Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5430 @ 2.66GHz (cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ‘model name’)
- memory: 613 MiB memory
- disk: I/O Performance – Low
- cost by hour: $0.020 per Hour
Amazon EC2 Small
- zone: us-east-1b
- type: m1.small
- processor:
- 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit)
- Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 0 @ 2.00GHz (cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ‘model name’)
- memory: 1.7 GiB memory
- disk: I/O Performance: Moderate
- cost by hour: $0.060
- More information about Amazon Instances: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
Commands used to make the benchmark:
-
CPU
|
1 |
sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run |
-
Disk:
First command:
|
1 |
hdparm -t |
Second command:
|
1 2 3 4 |
cd /root sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=5G prepare sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=5G --file-test-mode=rndrw --init-rng=on --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=5G cleanup |
Database:
|
1 2 3 |
sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=password prepare sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=password --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=1 run sysbench --test=oltp --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=password cleanup |
Results
Disk:
- sysbench: the parameter chosen to compare the two instances was “Total transferred” [1]:
Amazon EC2 Micro
|
1 2 3 |
Read 339.38Mb Written 226.25Mb Total transferred 565.62Mb (1.8854Mb/sec) Read 270.34Mb Written 180.22Mb Total transferred 450.56Mb (1.5017Mb/sec) Read 190.05Mb Written 126.69Mb Total transferred 316.73Mb (1.0557Mb/sec) |
Amazon EC2 Small
|
1 2 3 |
Read 349.91Mb Written 233.27Mb Total transferred 583.17Mb (1.9439Mb/sec) Read 464.06Mb Written 309.38Mb Total transferred 773.44Mb (2.5781Mb/sec) Read 503.84Mb Written 335.89Mb Total transferred 839.73Mb (2.7878Mb/sec) |
Rackspace
|
1 2 3 |
Read 513.11Mb Written 342.06Mb Total transferred 855.17Mb (2.8506Mb/sec) Read 567.05Mb Written 378.03Mb Total transferred 945.08Mb (3.1502Mb/sec) Read 560.42Mb Written 373.61Mb Total transferred 934.03Mb (3.1134Mb/sec) |
- hdparm
Amazon EC2 Micro
|
1 2 3 |
Timing buffered disk reads: 236 MB in 3.01 seconds = 78.38 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 234 MB in 3.01 seconds = 77.84 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 234 MB in 3.01 seconds = 77.84 MB/sec |
Amazon EC2 Small
|
1 2 3 |
Timing buffered disk reads: 164 MB in 3.01 seconds = 54.54 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 202 MB in 3.01 seconds = 67.11 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.03 seconds = 58.09 MB/sec |
Rackspace
|
1 2 3 |
Timing buffered disk reads: 280 MB in 3.09 seconds = 90.61 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 320 MB in 3.01 seconds = 106.19 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 312 MB in 3.01 seconds = 103.59 MB/sec |
Processor:
- sysbench: the parameter chosen to compare the two instances was “Total time”[1]:
Amazon EC2 Micro:
|
1 2 3 |
total time: 87.9426s total time: 118.4636s total time: 96.8280s |
Amazon EC2 Small
|
1 2 3 |
total time: 68.9673s total time: 68.9334s total time: 68.9207s |
Rackspace:
|
1 2 3 |
total time: 44.5527s total time: 44.6108s total time: 44.6342s |
Mysql Benchmark:
- systench: the parameter chosen to compare the two instances was “transactions”:
Amazon EC2 Micro
|
1 2 3 |
transactions: 8850 (147.28 per sec.) transactions: 9709 (161.78 per sec.) transactions: 8866 (147.70 per sec.) |
Amazon EC2 Small
|
1 2 3 |
transactions: 10711 (178.51 per sec.) transactions: 10766 (179.42 per sec.) transactions: 10678 (177.96 per sec.) |
Rackspace
|
1 2 3 |
transactions: 20982 (349.69 per sec.) transactions: 20432 (340.53 per sec.) transactions: 20483 (341.37 per sec.) |
All results can be downloaded in this file: cloudservers_benchmark-Amazon-vs-Rackspace.txt
Conclusion
The first virtual machine available on Rackspace offers a great virtual hardware with a good price because its disk, processor and database analysis results are better than Amazon Micro and Small Instances.
This article compared only a few requirements when you have to choose a cloud service. There are others requirements like support, SLA, and others products like the one offered by Amazon Web Service.
References:
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