Overview
Alibaba Cloud Database released an RDS instance based on Alibaba Etian chip (ARM architecture) at last year's Yunqi Conference, which was later officially named the economic version. This article uses standard sysbench testing to see whether the economic version is more "economical" compared to the standard version, so as to help developers choose the specifications that suit them.
Here, the 4c16g specification, which is more commonly used by users, is selected for testing. The testing tool uses the oltp_read_write model of sysbench for testing. For configuration parameters and options, try to use the default options during the RDS purchase process to provide a configuration that is closer to what the user uses. Specifically, the default "high-performance parameter template" was used, ESSD PL1 storage was used, and the default 8.0 instance was selected.
in conclusion
In the default configuration above, 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 24, and 32 concurrent threads were used for testing. Overall, the economic version (ARM) instance performance is about 4% lower than the x86 version, and the latency is about 4% higher. In terms of price, the economical version (ARM) of this specification is about 36% lower than the standard version (x86), Using Alibaba Cloud RDS Economic Edition (ARM) is indeed more cost-effective, and is 32% more cost-effective than the standard version (x86).
Specifically, here we select 16 concurrency as the performance benchmark reference, then the corresponding TPS of the economic version is 2185, and the TPS of the standard version is 2324. In terms of price, the price of the economic version of this specification is 1.61 yuan/hour, and the price of the standard version is 2.52 yuan/hour, so the corresponding prices per 1,000 TPS are: 0.74 yuan and 1.08 yuan respectively. From a cost-effective perspective, the economic version has improved by 31.5%.
The figure below shows the complete test data. On the other hand, you can also see thatthe x86 version still has certain advantages in performance and latency, if you pursue more extreme performance and better stability, it is recommended to use the x86 version.
Therefore, the economical version (ARM) RDS is still worth a try.
Test method description
The mixed read-write model (oltp_read_write) of sysbench is used here for testing. The single table size is 1 million, and there are ten tables in total. The single test duration is 300 seconds. The following concurrency performance is tested: 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 24, 32.
The RDS used in the test is an instance of the 4c16g high-availability series, "universal" specifications, ESSD PL1/100GB cloud disk, dual availability zones, MySQL 8.0, and the "High Performance Parameters" template selected by default. The tested ECS uses the 8c8g specification, and the tested ECS is also in the same availability zone. Therefore, it is also noted that the overall latency of RDS performance is very low.
Specifications and Price Details
Detailed test data reference
The detailed test results of the RDS Economic Edition (ARM) 4c16g general-purpose instance are as follows:
threads|transactions| queries| time |avg/Latency|95%/Latency2| 115305| 2306100|300.01| 5.20| 5.994| 225711| 4514220|300.01| 5.32| 6.098| 425336| 8506720|300.01| 5.64| 6.9110| 518460|10369200|300.01| 5.78| 7.1712| 604286|12085720|300.01| 5.96| 7.7014| 634556|12691120|300.01| 6.62| 13.2216| 655665|13113300|300.01| 7.32| 21.8924| 628932|12578640|300.01| 11.45| 45.7932| 628452|12569040|300.03| 15.27| 57.87
The detailed test results of RDS Standard Edition (x86) 4c16g instance are as follows:
threads|transactions| queries| time |avg/Latency|95%/Latency2| 113699| 2273980|300.01| 5.28| 5.574| 228466| 4569320|300.01| 5.25| 5.578| 439913| 8798260|300.01| 5.45| 5.7710| 540436|10808720|300.01| 5.55| 5.8812| 629480|12589600|300.01| 5.72| 6.0914| 710254|14205080|300.01| 5.91| 7.3016| 697323|13946460|300.01| 6.88| 18.6124| 661203|13224060|300.01| 10.89| 47.4732| 656784|13135680|300.01| 14.61| 58.92
Limitations and instructions
The real scenario will be more complex, and there are more factors to consider, such as database scenario models, different parameter templates, different disk performance (ESSD PL1/2/3), different generations of CPUs, different specifications ("universal" , "exclusive"), price discounts, etc. This article attempts to give developers an intuitive feeling of performance by testing a commonly used specification and configuration, so as to help developers choose appropriate and more cost-effective database specifications and types.
summary
Alibaba Cloud RDS's economical version (ARM version) has been officially commercialized for a year. According to actual measurements, it has a very clear cost-effective advantage compared to the x86 version. With the same specifications, the performance loss is about 5%, but the price is 35% lower. Descent is very suitable for development and testing environments, as well as small-scale trial use in production environments.
Finally, this will be a series of articles. In the follow-up, we will also consider comparing the performance of ARM instances and x86 instances of Huawei Cloud and AWS to help developers choose a database architecture and specifications that are more cost-effective and more suitable for them.
About the author: orczhou, co-founder of NineData, Oracle ACE (MySQL), translator of the third and fourth editions of "High Performance MySQL", and former senior expert on Alibaba Cloud database.