In this session, we explain how to measure the key performance-impacting metrics in a cloud-based application. With specific examples of good and bad tests, we make it clear how to get reliable measurements of CPU, memory, disk, and how to map benchmark results to your application. We also cover the importance of selecting tests wisely, repeating tests, and measuring variability.

1. Best Practices for Benchmarking and
Performance Analysis in the Cloud
Robert Barnes, Amazon Web Services
November 15, 2013
© 2013 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified, or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

2. Benchmarks: Measurement Demo
4
How many
ways to
measure?
6
3
At least 20…
4
3

3. Cloud Benchmarks: Prequel
•
•
•
•
•
The best benchmark
Absolute vs. relative measures
Fixed time or fixed work
What’s different?
Use a good AMI
Average CPU result
CentOS 5.4 ami-…
CentOS 5.4 ami-…
CentOS 5.4 ami-…
AWS CentOS 5.4 ami-…
Ubuntu 12.4 ami-…
0.00 5.00 10.0015.0020.0025.0030.00
Coefficient of Variance
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

4. Scenario: CPU-based Instance Selection
•
•
•
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
Application runs on premises
Primary requirement is integer CPU performance
Application is complex to set up, no benchmark tests exist, limited time
What instance would work best?
Choose a synthetic benchmark
Baseline: Build, configure, tune, and run it on premises
Run the same test (or tests) on a set of instance types
Use results from the instance tests to choose the best match

5. Testing CPU
• Choose a benchmark
– geekbench, UnixBench, sysbench(cpu), and SPEC CPU2006
Integer
• How do you know when you have a good result?
• Tests run on 9 instance types
– 10 instances of each of the 9 types launched
– Tests run a minimum of 4 times on each instance
– Ubuntu 13.04 base AMI

6. geekbench Overview
• Workloads in 3 categories
– 13 Integer tests
– 10 Floating Point tests
– 4 Memory tests
•
•
•
•
Integer
AES
Twofish
SHA1
SHA2
BZip2 compress
BZip2 decompress
JPEG compress
JPEG decompress
PNG compress
Commercial product (64bit)
No source code
Runs single and multi-cpu
Fast setup, fast runtime
PNG decompress
Sobel
LUA
Dijkstra
Memory
STREAM copy
STREAM scale
STREAM add
STREAM triad
Floating Point
Black-Scholes
Mandelbrot
Sharpen image
Blur image
SGEMM
DGEMM
SFFT
DFFT
N-Body
Ray trace

7. geekbench Script
SEQNO=$1
GBTXT=gbtest.txt
DL=+
ID="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`"
TYPE="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type`”
OUTID=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL
START=$(date +%s.%N)
./geekbench_x86_64 --no-upload >$GBTXT
END=$(date +%s.%N)
DIFF=$(echo "$END - $START" | bc)
OUTNAME=$OUTID$SEQNO$DL$DIFF$DL$GBTXT
mv $GBTXT $OUTNAME
…
grep “Geekbench Score” i-*$GBTXT >gbresults.txt
cat gbresults.txt | sed s/:// | awk ‘/i-/ {print $1”;”$4”;”$5}’>gbresults.csv

8. geekbench
Geekbench
1CPU ratio C.O.V.
m3.xlarge
m3.2xlarge
m2.xlarge
m2.2xlarge
m2.4xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
NCPU ratio C.O.V.
0.93
0.93
0.80
0.80
0.76
1.13
1.13
1.13
1.00
2.04
3.80
1.54
2.82
5.11
1.32
2.51
4.88
15.46
1.04%
1.40%
2.84%
1.34%
2.28%
0.93%
0.39%
0.19%
0.71%
2.31%
1.46%
4.06%
1.21%
1.71%
0.71%
1.81%
0.25%
1.93%
RT (min)
2.06
2.08
1.99
2.04
2.01
1.76
1.74
1.70
2.21

9. geekbench – Run Variance
geekbench 1CPU ratio
m3.xlarge
instance-1
instance-2
instance-3
instance-4
instance-5
instance-6
instance-7
instance-8
instance-9
instance-10
0.93
0.97
0.94
0.94
0.94
0.94
0.93
0.93
0.94
0.94
C.O.V.
0.31%
0.23%
0.17%
0.10%
0.32%
0.10%
0.25%
0.38%
0.11%
0.09%

10. geekbench – Integer Portion
gb-integer 1CPU ratio
C.O.V.
NCPU ratio
C.O.V.
RT (min)
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
1.12
1.13
1.12
1.00
0.50%
0.38%
0.38%
0.20%
1.37
2.72
5.35
17.88
0.43%
0.41%
0.51%
3.31%
NA
NA
NA
NA
geekbench
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
1.13
1.13
1.13
1.00
0.93%
0.39%
0.19%
0.71%
1.32
2.51
4.88
15.46
0.71%
1.81%
0.25%
1.93%
1.76
1.74
1.70
2.21

11. UnixBench Overview
• Default: the BYTE Index
– 12 workloads, run 2 times (roughly 29 minutes each time)
•
•
•
•
Integer computation
Floating point computation
System calls
File system calls
– Geomean Of results to a baseline produces a system benchmarks
index score
• Open source – must be built
– Must be patched for > 16 CPUs
11

12. UnixBench Script
SEQNO=$1
UBTXT=ubtest.txt
DL=+
ID="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`"
TYPE="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type`"
FN=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL$SEQNO$DL$UBTXT
COPIES=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc –l`
./Run –c 1 –c $COPIES >$FN
…
grep “System Benchmarks Index Score” i-*$UBTXT >ubresults.txt
cat ubresults.txt | sed s/”.txt:System Benchmarks Index Score”// |
awk ‘/i-/ {print $1”;”$2}’>ubresults.csv

13. UnixBench
UnixBench 1CPU ratio
m3.xlarge
m3.2xlarge
m2.xlarge
m2.2xlarge
m2.4xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
1.38
1.42
0.40
0.42
0.48
1.10
1.06
1.10
1.00
C.O.V.
1.90%
1.85%
5.82%
1.71%
3.31%
1.33%
1.48%
0.54%
2.97%
NCPU ratio
2.49
4.21
0.76
1.23
2.02
1.91
2.85
4.50
6.44
C.O.V.
1.36%
1.99%
1.28%
1.75%
1.71%
1.54%
1.26%
1.02%
2.65%
RT (min)
28.25
28.29
28.30
28.32
28.34
28.17
28.21
28.96
30.20

14. UnixBench – Dhrystone 2
UB-Integer 1CPU ratio
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarg
e
UnixBench
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarg
e
C.O.V.
NCPU ratio
C.O.V.
RT (min)
1.05
1.05
1.05
0.24%
0.27%
0.07%
1.10
2.20
4.34
0.30%
0.28%
0.23%
0.17
0.17
0.17
1.00
0.10%
15.54
0.95%
0.17
1.10
1.06
1.10
1.33%
1.48%
0.54%
1.91
2.85
4.50
1.54%
1.26%
1.02%
28.17
28.21
28.96
1.00
2.97%
6.44
2.65%
30.20

15. SPEC CPU2006 Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
Competitive (reviewed)
Commercial (site) license required
Source code provided, must be built
Highly customizable
Full “reportable” run 5+ hours
Published results on www.spec.org

16. SPEC CPU2006 Overview
Benchmark
400.perlbench
401.bzip2
403.gcc
429.mcf
445.gobmk
456.hmmer
458.sjeng
462.libquantum
464.h264ref
471.omnetpp
473.astar
483.xalancbmk
Category
C
Programming language
C
Compression
C
C compiler
C
Combinatorial optimization
C
Artificial intelligence
C
Search gene sequence
C
Artificial intelligence
C
Physics / quantum computing
C
Video compression
C++ Discrete event simulation
C++ Path-finding algorithms
C++ Xml processing

17. SPEC CPU2006 Integer Script
CPATH=“/cpu2006/result”
COPIES=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc –l`
SITXT=estspecint.txt
DL=+
ID="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`”
TYPE="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type`”
FN=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL$SEQNO$DL$SITXT
runspec –noreportable –tune=base –size=ref –rate=$COPIES –iterations=1 /
400 403 445 456 458 462 464 471 473 483
grep “_base” $CPATH/CINT*.ref.csv | cut -d, -f1-2 > $FN
grep “total seconds elapsed” $CPATH/CPU*.log | awk '/finished/ {print $9}’ >>$FN

18. Estimated SPEC CPU2006 Integer
Est.
SPECint
m3.xlarge
m3.2xlarge
m2.xlarge
m2.2xlarge
m2.4xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
1CPU ratio
1.01
1.01
0.76
0.79
0.78
1.11
1.10
1.08
1.00
C.O.V.
1.06%
1.67%
1.97%
0.94%
0.16%
1.95%
1.96%
0.87%
0.29%
RT (min)
54.39
54.49
70.83
68.85
68.73
50.00
50.29
50.87
54.92
NCPU
ratio
2.24
4.25
1.39
2.76
5.21
1.25
2.39
4.67
14.92
C.O.V.
1.15%
1.63%
2.45%
1.24%
1.26%
1.47%
1.28%
0.25%
0.52%
RT (min)
104.18
109.22
85.37
85.42
89.91
94.22
97.66
100.22
125.74

19. Sysbench Overview
• Designed as quick system test of MySQL servers
• Test categories
–
–
–
–
–
–
Fileio
Cpu
Memory
Threads
Mutex
oltp
• Source code provided, must be built
• Very simplistic defaults – tuning recommended

20. Sysbench Script
COPIES=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc –l`
TDS=$(($COPIES * 2))
STXT=sysbenchcpu.txt
DL=+
ID="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`”
TYPE="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type`”
FN=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL$TDS$DL$STXT
sysbench –num-threads=$TDS --max-requests=30000 --test=cpu /
--cpu-max-prime=100000 run > $FN
grep “total time:” i-*$STXT| cut -d, -f1-2 > $FN

21. Sysbench – CPU
sysbench
m3.xlarge
m3.2xlarge
m2.xlarge
m2.2xlarge
m2.4xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
Default
3.21
6.41
1.59
3.19
8.83
1.78
3.55
6.55
25.34
C.O.V.
1.44%
1.38%
0.75%
0.64%
0.62%
0.26%
0.53%
8.45%
2.30%
RT (min) tuned ratio
0.06
0.03
0.11
0.06
0.02
0.10
0.05
0.03
0.01
1.69
3.38
0.80
1.60
4.71
0.91
1.83
3.54
13.69
C.O.V.
1.29%
1.41%
0.23%
0.76%
0.20%
0.09%
0.02%
3.31%
1.10%
RT (min)
3.86
1.93
8.16
4.07
1.38
7.13
3.57
1.85
0.48

22. Summary: CPU Comparison
GB
GB
Int
UB
UB
Int
Est.
SPECInt
sysbench
default
sysbench
tuned
m3.xlarge
2.04
2.01
2.49
1.88
2.24
3.21
1.69
m3.2xlarge
3.80
3.96
4.21
3.77
4.25
6.41
3.38
m2.xlarge
1.54
1.52
0.76
1.59
1.38
1.59
0.80
m2.2xlarge
2.82
3.02
1.23
3.19
2.76
3.19
1.60
m2.4xlarge
5.11
5.54
2.02
6.48
5.21
8.83
4.71
c3.large
1.32
1.37
1.91
1.10
1.25
1.78
0.91
c3.xlarge
2.51
2.72
2.85
2.20
2.39
3.55
1.83
c3.2xlarge
4.88
5.35
4.50
4.34
4.67
6.55
3.54
15.46 17.88
6.44
15.5
4
14.92
25.34
13.69
cc2.8xlarge

23. Scenario: Memory Instance Selection
• Application runs on premises
• Primary requirement: memory throughput of 20K MB/sec
• What instance would work best?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Choose a synthetic benchmark
Baseline: Build, configure, tune, and run it on premises
Run the same test (or tests) on a set of instance types
Use results from the instance tests to choose the best match

24. Testing Memory
• Choose a benchmark:
– stream, geekbench, sysbench(memory)
• How do you know when you have a good result?
• Tests run on 9 instance types
– Minimum of 10 instances launched
– Tests run a minimum of 3 times on each instance
– Ubuntu 13.04 base AMI

25. Stream* Overview
• Synthetic measure sustainable memory bandwidth
–
–
–
–
Published results at www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/top20/Bandwidth.html
Must be built
By default, runs 1 thread per cpu
Use stream-scaling to automate array size and thread scaling
• https://github.com/gregs1104/stream-scaling
name kernel
COPY: a(i) = b(i)
SCALE: a(i) = q*b(i)
SUM: a(i) = b(i) + c(i)
TRIAD: a(i) = b(i) + q*c(i)
bytes FLOPS
iter
iter
16
0
16
1
24
1
24
2
* McCalpin, John D.: "STREAM: Sustainable Memory Bandwidth in High Performance Computers",

26. Memory Scripts
TDS=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc –l`
export OMP_NUM_THREADS= $TDS
MTXT=stream.txt
DL=+
ID="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`”
TYPE="`wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type`”
FN=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL$TDS$DL$MTXT
./stream | egrep
"Number of Threads requested|Function|Triad|Failed|Expected|Observed" > $FN
MTXT=sysbench-mem.txt
FN=$ID$DL$TYPE$DL$TDS$DL$MTXT
./sysbench --num-threads=$TDS --test=memory run >$FN

27. Memory Comparison
StreamTriad
m3.xlarge
m3.2xlarge
m2.xlarge
m2.2xlarge
m2.4xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c3.2xlarge
cc2.8xlarge
23640.56
26046.17
18766.58
22421.91
19634.50
11434.83
21141.30
30235.78
55200.86
Geekbench
sysbench
Memory-Triad (default)
15375.64
14999.27
17365.76
17600.00
14405.82
9967.96
13972.65
20657.49
37067.32
302.95
603.40
528.16
1019.08
1576.30
2116.84
2643.33
2944.91
1195.90
sysbench memory defaults
--memory-block-size [1K]
--memory-total-size [100G]
--memory-scope {global,local} [global]
--memory-hugetlb [off]
--memory-oper {read, write, none} [write]
--memory-access-mode {seq,rnd} [seq]

28. Testing Disk I/O
• Storage options:
–
–
–
–
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS PIOPs
Ephemeral
hi1.4xlarge local storage
• Test parameters:
–
–
–
–
–
Read %
Write %
Sequential
Random
Queue depth
• Storage configuration
– Volume(s)
– RAID
– LVM
• I/O metrics
– IOPs
– Throughput
– Latency

29. Benchmarking PIOPs
1200
Launch an Amazon EBS-optimized
instance
•
Create provisioned IOPS volumes
•
Attach the volumes to Amazon
EBS-optimized instance
•
Pre-warm volumes
•
Tune queue depth and latency
against IOPs
PIOPs 2K Queue Depth
1D PIOPS 2K
QD2
2D PIOPS 2K
2D PIOPS 2K
QD2
1000
Latency (usec)
•
1D PIOPS 2K
800
600
400
200
0
Seq.
Read
Seq.
Write
Mixed
Seq
Read
Mixed
Seq
Write
Rand
Read
Rand
Write
Mixed
Rand
Read
Mixed
Rand
Write

30. Testing Disk I/O Examples
• disk copy
• cp file1 /disk1/file1
• dd
• dd if=/dev/zero of=/data1/testile1
bs=1048 count=1024000
• fio – flexible io tester
• fio simple.cfg
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
[global]
clocksource=cpu
randrepeat=0
ioengine=libaio
direct=1
group_reporting
size=1G
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
[xvdd-fill]
filename=/data1/testfile1
refill_buffers
scramble_buffers=1
iodepth=4
rw=write
bs=2m
stonewall
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
[xvdd-1disk-write-1k-1]
time_based
ioscheduler=deadline
iodepth=1
rate_iops=4080
ramp_time=10
filename=/data1/testfile1
runtime=30
bs=1k
rw=write

31. Summary Disk I/O
Seconds MB/sec
cp f1 f2
17.248
59.37
rm –rf f2; cp f1 f2
.853 1200.47
cp f1 f3
.880 1164.96
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1048 count=1024000 of=d1
.722 1419.01
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1048 count=1024000 of=d2
fio simple.cfg
79.710
12.84
NA
61.55

32. Beyond Simple Disk I/O
Random PIOPs 16disk
1M I/O MBps
read
1006.73
write
904.03
r70w30
1005.91

33. Summary
If benchmarking your application is not practical, synthetic
benchmarks can be used if you are careful.
•
•
•
•
•
Choose the best benchmark that represents your application
Analysis – what does “best” mean?
Run enough tests to quantify variability
Baseline – what is a “good result” ?
Samples – keep all of your results – more is better!

34. Please give us your feedback on this
presentation
ENT305
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