Out-of-the-box performance comparison of Linux Cloud Servers across multiple cloud hosting vendors.

1. Linux Performance Benchmarking Report
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Methodology
The objective of the test suite was to show out-of-the-box performance for cloud servers across
multiple cloud hosting vendors. The following steps were performed to run the tests on NephoScale
and other industry leading cloud IaaS providers.
1. A virtual server instance in the cost range provided was provisioned for each vendor in the
matrix.
2. The open-source CloudBench tool was then downloaded, and without any post provisioning
modifications of the VM, the tool was run and the data recorded.
3. CloudBench uses industry standard benchmark tests for Linux servers, including Phoronix Test
Suite, fio, ioping, and IOzone and logs the combined output in any easy to read format.
4. All tests we performed using Ubuntu Precise 14.04 64-bit and Python 2.7, and the default
parameters were provided when running CloudBench.
5. All pricing and performance data is accurate as of September 1st, 2014.
Benchmarking Methodology
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IOZone Write Performance Test
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IOZone data in MB/s averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
VM Price Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 138 30 4 124
$0.022 - $0.06 166 20 9 115 37
$0.07 - $0.09 152 12 19 33 61
$0.1- $0.12 172 1 13 101 54
$0.16 - $0.18 133 20 16 65
$0.21 - $0.27 130 24 15 161 69
$0.32 - $0.68 144 36 16 23 125 24 51
$0.72 - $0.96 128 30 15 140 55
$1.08 - $2.72 15 23 149 11
• The IOZone write
performance test measures
the throughput of writing
16KB records to a 512MB file
using Direct I/O
• Measured in MB/s this
statistic is a good indicator of
raw bandwidth available for
writing a file sequentially to
the file system

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IOZone Read Performance Test
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IOZone data in MB/s averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
Hourly Price
Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 190 92 4 131
$0.022 - $0.06 181 134 14 143 59
$0.07 - $0.09 216 33 17 54 95
$0.1- $0.12 213 242 48 110 77
$0.16 - $0.18 211 16 19 111
$0.21 - $0.27 144 160 48 193 104
$0.32 - $0.68 186 149 38 17 175 66 72
$0.72 - $0.96 214 179 39 187 86
$1.08 - $2.72 35 17 175 59 81
• The IOZone read performance
test measures the throughput
of reading 16KB records from
a 512MB file using Direct I/O
• Measured in MB/s this
statistic is a good indicator of
raw bandwidth available for
reading a file sequentially
from the file system

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FIO Random Write IOPs Performance Test
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FIO data in 4k blocks averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
Hourly Price
Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 9716 2235 275 7654
$0.022 - $0.06 11237 2289 652 7505 5294
$0.07 - $0.09 12254 1033 1355 4371 1212
$0.1- $0.12 9569 211 1263 6039 1551
$0.16 - $0.18 11910 1426 4083 2335
$0.21 - $0.27 8338 1692 1009 10006 2333
$0.32 - $0.68 11701 2466 1260 1688 8386 5221 1205
$0.72 - $0.96 11272 1811 1234 8192 1191
$1.08 - $2.72 1112 1759 8855 5674 2033
• The FIO (Flexible I/O) random
write performance test
measures the rate of
Input/Output operations per
second while writing 4KB blocks
randomly to a 512MB file using
synchronous Direct I/O
• Measured in IOPs this statistic is
a good indicator of the average
number of system calls per unit
time achievable for random
write operations to a file in the
file system

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FIO Random Read IOPs Performance Test
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FIO data in 4k blocks averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
Hourly Price
Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 9528 6140 337 7513
$0.022 - $0.06 12570 7548 922 6102 3641
$0.07 - $0.09 13468 2364 1000 3259 507
$0.1- $0.12 14397 8378 3064 5259 3254
$0.16 - $0.18 12958 1075 2711 6427
$0.21 - $0.27 11261 9291 3064 11788 6763
$0.32 - $0.68 11313 8940 2680 1160 5957 3851 553
$0.72 - $0.96 9392 9598 2651 7058 533
$1.08 - $2.72 2394 1158 8635 4382 5216
• The FIO (Flexible I/O) random
read performance test measures
the rate of Input/Output
operations per second while
reading 4KB blocks randomly
from a 512MB file using Direct
I/O
• Measured in IOPs this statistic is
a good indicator of the average
number of system calls per unit
time achievable for random read
operations from a file in the file
system

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IOPing Latency Performance Test
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IO Ping data in Micro Seconds averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
Hourly Price
Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 155 250 309 229
$0.022 - $0.06 186 358 316 205 333
$0.07 - $0.09 220 667 318 423 163
$0.1- $0.12 149 185 340 239 209
$0.16 - $0.18 249 323 348 225
$0.21 - $0.27 180 213 317 138 178
$0.32 - $0.68 142 311 560 319 223 367 238
$0.72 - $0.96 128 242 500 215 263
$1.08 - $2.72 586 319 187 297 328
• The IOPing latency
performance test measures
the round-trip time (similar to
a network ping test) by writing
and reading from a file using
Direct I/O
• Measured in microseconds this
statistic is a good indicator of
latency or time it takes for a
write followed by a read
operation to a file in the file
system

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CPU Performance Test
8
Multi Core data in Seconds averaged across Linux virtual servers within the cost category
Hourly Price
Range NephoScale Digital Ocean AWS GCE Linode Rackspace Soft Layer
$0.007 - $0.02 812 1026 2549 773
$0.022 - $0.06 472 354 1065 242 661
$0.07 - $0.09 221 1111 397 447 714
$0.1- $0.12 116 327 422 114 650
$0.16 - $0.18 117 337 194 359
$0.21 - $0.27 81 109 221 87 185
$0.32 - $0.68 97 67 114 95 65 153 108
$0.72 - $0.96 74 61 117 59 68
$1.08 - $2.72 33 61 53 83 93
• The CPU performance test
measures the time to
compile the Linux kernel on
a multi-core system
• Measured in seconds this
statistic is a good indicator
of CPU performance on
large standard data set with
a variety of data structures
(Linux kernel) and a large
program with a wide variety
of instructions (gcc)

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Metric NephoScale Industry Avg.
Performance
Comparison
NephoScale Price-
to-Performance
Ratio
Industry Avg. Price-
to-Performance
Ratio
Price-to-
Performance
Comparison
iozone-write MB/s 149.46 44.35 3.4 0.00134 0.01097 8.2
iozone-read MB/s 190.08 84.34 2.3 0.00106 0.00577 5.5
fio-write IOPS 10855.62 3187.19 3.4 0.00002 0.00015 8.3
fio-read IOPS 11802.85 4289.28 2.8 0.00002 0.00011 6.7
ioping-latency usec 174.23 336.68 0.5 0.00115 0.00145 1.3
multicore-cpu sec 331.85 319.84 1.0 0.00061 0.00152 2.5
price $/hour 0.2 0.49 0.4
Conclusion of Test Results
9
Conclusion
Taken on average cloud server disk I/O performance on NephoScale outperforms the industry average 2-3
times. At less than half the price of the competitors NephoScale's price-to-performance ratio is the best in the
industry with 1-8 times the value over the average.
Resources
The CloudBench tool we created to benchmark cloud service providers is located here and is open-sourced under
an Apache License v2.0. Pull requests are welcome to improve the tool with future enhancements.