A comparison of UKCloud s platform against other public cloud providers

Transcription

1 Pure commitment. A comparison of UKCloud s platform against other public cloud providers version 1.0 (Based upon August 2017 data)

2 The evolution of UKCloud UKCloud has long been known for its VMware powered Enterprise Compute Cloud, which has enabled hundreds of UK public sector workloads to be moved to the cloud. Since the launch of this service, we have made significant investments and numerous innovations in the physical infrastructure, software implementation and the manner in which VMware is utilised. The service that is available today has been vastly improved in terms of reliability, functionality and performance. Although there are several cloud providers available to the UK public sector, UKCloud maintains its position as the number one choice for security assured citizen-facing services with UK data centres and UK-based security cleared staff. There are several factors to consider when choosing a cloud provider, such as price, performance, reliability, suitability for workloads, sovereignty and assurance. Value for money will often be at the forefront of the decision-making process. However, at UKCloud we are competitive on more than just price and believe performance is an important metric to consider. This document will concentrate on performance benchmarking and introduces a comparison of performance on our VMware platform against other public cloud providers. Why does performance matter? These results are important for several reasons: 1. Cost control the superior performance of the UKCloud platform means that you can do more with less. To match our performance using the public cloud providers, you would need bigger instances, more instances or both significantly increasing the cost of those platforms. A platform that appears 20% cheaper but has half the performance may mean you end up paying 60% more for the same performance. 2. Business productivity our Enterprise Compute Cloud platform has been designed specifically for customers transitioning their legacy workloads to the cloud. The majority of legacy applications are running in virtualised environments using VMware and hence can be moved quickly, with less risk, and yet immediately benefit from the elasticity and scalability of the cloud. Superior performance means that greater operational efficiency can be achieved on our platform. 3. User experience as digital systems are increasingly used by millions of users (for example, citizens), it s important that your platform can deliver superior performance when your users need it. UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 2 of 11

3 Our approach to benchmarking To validate the performance of our platform, UKCloud has been running automated tests to compare the performance of our Enterprise Compute Cloud against two, leading proprietary public cloud platforms, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The benchmarking was based on the PerfKit Benchmarker tool which was originally developed by Google and made available to the open source community. PerfKit is designed to provide a repeatable, consistent and open way of measuring cloud performance. PerfKit was configured to specifically compare the UKCloud Region 6, Zone F Enterprise Compute Cloud platform with AWS EU-West 2 (London) region and the Azure London region. The benchmarks ran throughout August 2017 and average values for the month are reported below. UKCloud have worked on extending Perfkit to directly support vcloud Director based clouds, this is available from the UKCloud github pages and will be contributed back to the core repository. This will allow you run your own benchmarks with up-to-date data, allowing for a ready comparison of our performance against other public cloud providers. You will also be able to compare performance from a set time period of your choice. Benchmark results UKCloud performed a suite of tests to assess the performance of various components of the platform, as well as some end-to-end system tests. The following pages provide more detail regarding each of the benchmark results. Please note that for the graphs shown in this document, a higher result indicates superior performance (UKCloud outperforms AWS on 80% of the benchmarks performed and Azure on 100%). UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 3 of 11

4 Networking performance The networking performance test is a commonly used benchmark that can create TCP and UDP data streams and measure the throughput of a network that is carrying them. The values shown in the graph below indicate the maximum throughput of the respective networks. UKCloud has a maximum throughput almost 4 times higher than that of AWS and over 6 times higher than Azure. This is important for customers who are moving large sets of data or need quick access to their data over the network. This results in less time spent waiting for data transfers to be completed, which allows applications to access their data more quickly, meaning applications are able to run faster, giving a better user experience Network performance (Mbit/s) 0 UKCloud AWS Azure UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 4 of 11

5 MongoDB (NoSQL) overall performance* MongoDB is an open-source database developed by MongoDB, Inc. Unlike relational databases, it stores data in JSON format that can vary in structure. This data model gives you the ability to represent hierarchical relationships and other complex structures easily. MongoDB was designed with high availability and scalability and therefore includes out-ofthe-box replication and auto-scaling. The performance of MongoDB running on the UKCloud Enterprise Compute Cloud platform is almost 2 times faster than both AWS and Azure meaning that MongoDB performs over twice as many operations per second on the UKCloud platform. This results in better database performance and means there is higher data availability to applications, which in turn affects the service that a customer consumes, resulting in a better customer experience MongoDB performance (Ops/sec) UKCloud AWS Azure *Test performed with 32 threads and a combination of operation types. UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 5 of 11

6 Redis Redis is an open-source, in-memory data structure used as a database, cache and message broker. Supported data structures include strings, hashes, lists, sets, stored sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes. The outstanding performance of Redis is achieved through an in-memory dataset. Depending on what you use RDB (Redis) for, you can benefit from on-disk persistence by dumping the dataset to disk or appending each command to a log. RDB (Redis) running on UKCloud is 2 times faster than AWS and almost 2 times faster than Azure, meaning that Redis can perform twice as many requests per second on our platform. This results in better caching and message throughput which means that smaller clusters of data are required for the same workload. This also means that fewer VMs are required for the workload, therefore saving the user money Redis Performance (reqs/s) UKCloud AWS Azure UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 6 of 11

7 Random IO Performance (IOPs) Random read is a measure of how quickly multiple small files can be read from random areas on a disk. Random read performance is measured in input-output operations per second with the number shown below an indication of the maximum number of reads. Random write uses the same disk pattern as random read but data is written to the disk rather than read. The graph below shows that the UKCloud platform performs 2.5 times faster random read IOPs than AWS and over 15 times faster than Azure. For random write, the UKCloud platform performs 9 times more IOPs than AWS and almost 61 times more than Azure. This means that enterprise applications such as relational databases which are diskintensive (require high I/O), perform better on the UKCloud platform. Databases and applications that are disk intensive are often slowed down by their storage, hence the increased popularity of Solid State Drives (SSD). However, as the graph below shows, UKCloud provides fast storage access allowing applications to rapidly access and process data, resulting in faster applications compared to AWS and Azure s equivalent storage option Random IO Performance 0 UKCloud AWS Azure Random read Random write UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 7 of 11

8 Sequential IO Performance (IOPs) Sequential read is a disk access pattern where large continuous blocks of data are read from adjacent locations on the disk. Sequential write is the same pattern, but data is written to the disk rather than read. These kinds of disk access patterns are common when accessing large multimedia files such as music, video and images. They are also important for data warehouses and analytics applications. The graph below shows that for sequential read the UKCloud platform performs 8 times better than AWS and almost 4 times better than Azure. For sequential write, the UKCloud platform has a maximum IO over 3 times higher than AWS and 2 times higher than Azure. As with databases, these kinds of applications are often slowed down by their storage, hence the increased popularity of Solid State Drives (SSD). However, as the graph below shows, UKCloud provides fast storage access allowing applications to rapidly access and process data, resulting in faster applications compared to AWS and Azure s equivalent storage option. High sequential IO performance is vital for data analysis and specifically for data warehouses which are a core component of business intelligence and thus guide key management decisions Sequential IO Performance UKCloud AWS Azure Sequential read Sequential write UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 8 of 11

9 Where does UKCloud Enterprise Compute Cloud outperform public cloud providers? These results show that the UKCloud Enterprise Compute Cloud platform consistently outperforms both AWS and Azure across a variety of benchmarks; (UKCloud outperforms AWS on 80% of the benchmarks performed and Azure on 100%). Networking Performance o Almost 4 times higher than AWS o Over 6 times higher than Azure o Users spend less time transferring data on the network, allowing applications to access their data faster and thus running faster also MongoDB o 2 times faster than AWS and Azure o Better database performance allows for higher data availability to applications, therefore resulting in a better customer experience Redis o 2 times faster than AWS o Almost 2 times faster than Azure o Smaller clusters of data are required for the same workload this means fewer VMs are required and therefore saves you money Random I/O Performance o Random Read is 2.5 times faster than AWS and over 15 times faster than Azure o Random Write is 9 times faster than AWS and almost 61 times faster than Azure o Faster storage access allows applications to rapidly access and process data and thus results in faster applications Sequential I/O Performance o Sequential Read is 8 times better than AWS and almost 4 times better than Azure o Sequential Write is over 3 times higher than AWS and 2 times higher than Azure o High sequential IO performance is vital for data analysis and specifically for data warehouses, it is a core component of business intelligence and thus guides key management decisions UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 9 of 11

10 Summary The data summarised in this document demonstrates that UKCloud not only competes with leading public cloud providers on price but also offers superior performance on our VMware platform. Using UKCloud s VMware platform means that you can do more for less as you can save money with simple usage-based billing and benefit from the greater performance the platform offers. Although a platform may appear cheaper, if it has half the performance this may mean you could end up paying significantly more for the same performance. Although actual performance may vary based upon numerous real-world factors such as internet latency, application-tuning and a low risk of multi-tenant contention, we are confident that these benchmark results truly reflect the greater performance that UKCloud s Enterprise Compute Cloud delivers over the nearest equivalent region and VM sizes of both AWS and Azure. We are continuously investigating ways to improve the performance of our Enterprise Compute Cloud platform through using the latest versions of VMware, software-defined storage and networking, coupled with adaptive storage and network tuning as the platform is consumed. All of this will reassure our customers that the greater performance delivered today, will remain in the future. UKCloud Ltd, 2017 Open Page 10 of 11

11 UKCloud Ltd A8 Cody Technology Park Ively Road Farnborough Hampshire GU14 0LX +44 (0) Reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this document. No advice given or statements or recommendations made shall in any circumstances constitute or be deemed to constitute a warranty by UKCloud Ltd as to the accuracy of such advice, statements or recommendations. UKCloud Ltd shall not be liable for any loss, expense, damage or claim howsoever arising out of the advice given or not given or statements made or omitted to be made in connection with this document. No part of this document may be copied, reproduced, adapted or redistributed in any form or by any means without the express prior written consent of UKCloud Ltd. UKCloud Ltd All Rights Reserved. 09/2017