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This is helpful but you're not mentioning what instance type at EC2.. t2 and t1 instances do heavy throttling after you use up your CPU credits[1] so it's likel

This is helpful but you're not mentioning what instance type at EC2.. t2 and t1 instances do heavy throttling after you use up your CPU credits[1] so it's likely that you were just using all or most of a full Xeon CPU. I got similar results on even a t2.nano.. until I used up the CPU credits. Then it slowed to a crawl! Also keep in mind that nbench only tests a single CPU[2]. Apples to apples would probably be a small m3 or m4 against a comparable DO instance. (but let's not go down that cost disparity rabbit hole.. esp EBS vs SSD or bandwidth!) 1. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/t2/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/t2/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBench#Shortcomings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBench#Shortcomings

antouank 11y ago
If nbench only uses 1 core, yes, my comparison is wrong. Is there a similar benchmarking linux tool that can use many cores? edit: instance is a t2.micro
- jamiesonbecker 11y ago
  I don't think the comparison is wrong per se; this actually makes it a bit easier, since you're just comparing one core to another. The only thing that I think is problematic is comparing a t2 to anything else, since that CPU performance is not sustainable as it might be elsewhere. m3 and m4 (and other instance types @ aws) are not explicitly throttled. (Source: AWS Solutions Architect) We're running a portion of our workload at Userify[1] on AWS, but not the biggest portion, but this is actually for bandwidth cost reasons, not CPU (even though our workload is almost entirely CPU and bandwidth -- almost zero disk; our infrastructure at AWS would cost 8x more!) 1. https://userify.com https://userify.com (SSH key management)
  - antouank 11y ago
    I assumed nbench uses all the available cores, that's why I said I'm wrong. On a 1 core basis, yes, it's useful, and I get that this t2 instance is not a stable baseline. I only have that available right now, as my free credit.
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  > Is there a similar benchmarking linux tool that can use many cores? There is kcbench: http://linux.die.net/man/1/kcbench http://linux.die.net/man/1/kcbench It compiles a kernel.

antouank 11y ago

If nbench only uses 1 core, yes, my comparison is wrong. Is there a similar benchmarking linux tool that can use many cores? edit: instance is a t2.micro

jamiesonbecker 11y ago
I don't think the comparison is wrong per se; this actually makes it a bit easier, since you're just comparing one core to another. The only thing that I think is problematic is comparing a t2 to anything else, since that CPU performance is not sustainable as it might be elsewhere. m3 and m4 (and other instance types @ aws) are not explicitly throttled. (Source: AWS Solutions Architect) We're running a portion of our workload at Userify[1] on AWS, but not the biggest portion, but this is actually for bandwidth cost reasons, not CPU (even though our workload is almost entirely CPU and bandwidth -- almost zero disk; our infrastructure at AWS would cost 8x more!) 1. https://userify.com https://userify.com (SSH key management)
- antouank 11y ago
  I assumed nbench uses all the available cores, that's why I said I'm wrong. On a 1 core basis, yes, it's useful, and I get that this t2 instance is not a stable baseline. I only have that available right now, as my free credit.
vmorgulis 11y ago
> Is there a similar benchmarking linux tool that can use many cores? There is kcbench: http://linux.die.net/man/1/kcbench http://linux.die.net/man/1/kcbench It compiles a kernel.