Cloud solutions power millions of companies worldwide. Market leader, Amazon Web Services, is challenged by new, aggressive players and consumers benefit from additional offerings, more computing power and even more flexible pricing. Knowledge is power, so learn what is the right solution for your business on every stage. Get independent data and benchmarks of Softlayer, GoGrid, Rackspace, Linode and ProfitBricks.

1. AWS ver. others

2. What is ForthScale?
● Scalable infrastructure solutions company
● Team of experts from Web and Telecom
● Led by professional with more than 13 years
of experience
● Established 2007
● Privately Held
● Global customer base
● Supporting web operations 24x7

3. What does Forthscale provide?
● Consulting
● Design
● Integration
● Implementation
● Management
Of IT infrastructure

4. IaaS origins
Idea of shared hosting
Better resource utilization
First IaaS / PaaS UI - Cpanel?
● IaaS - Infrastructure as a service
● PaaS - Platform as a service

5. IaaS - what for ?
Customer view (from different sources):
Easy / Fast to deploy
Scalability
Business agility
On demand flexible spending
Lower pricing
Less IT staff / Costs
Simpler staging

6. IaaS - providers approach
Different vendors have different agendas
● AWS - started as QA and dev clusters
● GoGrid - ambitious SF bay local hosting
● SL - merged traditional hosting and IaaS dev
● ProfitBricks - HPC made in Germany
● Linode / DO - evolution of shared hosting
● ClubVPS - knew VMware, targeted hosters
● CCC - capitalized on corporate customer
base
● NV - bought a license, failed to automate

7. Tech approach
● Hypervise / Contain
● All Virtual / Hybrid
● VM Only / Some PaaS
● HW Bundles / Pay per Units

8. Business approach
● Use resources utilization management to
your advantage, not hoster.
● Self service is a great slogan that will cost
you downtime.
● Pay for what you use, avoid paying for
resources you do not need.

9. Perks
● Shared HW LB
● Infiniband
● GUI design for infrastructure
● Burst resources
● Start-Up programs

10. Network to consider
● Number of locations
● Internal networks bandwidth
● Routes from developers and customers
● Traffic pricing policy

11. CPU Power Benchmarks
● Tested both single cores and multi cores.
● Q: Why test single core?
● A: Offered core can be different and it is a
basic calculation unit offered. And it was
different.

12. CPU Power Benchmark
1 thread of operations => loads 1 CPU thread
used: SysBench performance evaluation.
actual machines decommissioned
virtual and physical
sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run

13. P4 = Pentium 4 Dual core machine
i7 = Intel I7 CPU 975 Quad core 8 threads
DO = Digital Ocean
RS = Rackspace
SL = Soft Layer
PB = Profit Bricks
CCC = Triple C
AWS = Amazon Web Services

14. Power - single threaded load
Lower the better in sec:
P4 E5400 2c = 23.8986
i7 CPU 975@ 4c = 18.0273
Linode 1/ = 45.5619
DO 2c = 35.0549
DO 1c = 34.6393
RS 2c = 65.2599 CCC VZ = 69.9075
SL 1c = 23.8590 CCC 4c = 37.1676
PB 1c = 25.9413 AWS 4c = 35.6541

15. Power - multi threaded load
i7 CPU 975@ 4c = 3.7195
Linode 1/ = 8.7930
DO 1c = 35.1690
DO 2c = 17.5108
RS 2c = 28.1856
PB 4c = 6.4365
AWS 4c = 9.0700
CCC 4c = 9.4104
CCC VZ = 66.8083

16. CPU Power
● Cores were not born equal
● Sometimes shared 16 threads are better
than dedicated 2, sometimes it is not.
● Digital Ocean price / performance is
appealing. 1 core 1GB ram in Softlayer will
give you 10 cores 5 GB ram in Digital
Ocean. It can be a factor.

17. IO BW
Just a simple read test to calculate throughput
All devices configured in same manner
We used SW / HW / Virtual, IDE as reference
Command: hdparm -t

18. IO BW
IDE SW RAID1 = 94.95
IDE HW RAID5 = 241.01
EC2 EBS = 91.49 RS VM = 73.46
EC2 IS = 615.19
SL Local = 568.97 SL NAS = 232.99
Linode = 204.37 Hetzner VPS = 104.07
DO EU = 258.61 DO NA = 397.14
CCC VM = 468.87 PB EU = 621.96

19. IO BW

20. Pricing issues, what to expect
AWS just bundles ....
You can lease HW in 12 and 36m commitments
You can buy some unused capacity
SL will drive you insane ...
2cores 2GB of RAM might cost more than 4
Linode will provide you with fair pricing

21. Pricing issues, what to expect
● GoGrid will sell you more then you probably
need. You need to buy capacity but at least
you can decide how to break it.
● ProfitBricks have very straight forward
pricing.
● Hetzner will lease you a loooot of used
drives. But if you want a lot of resources for
cheap - YES

22. Pricing - starter budget
Let`s see how much will 50$ will get you.
Ins=Instances, C=Cores, GB=Giga of RAM
SL: 1C+1GB, GoGrid: 0.5C+0.5GB
Linode: 2Ins x 1GB or 1Ins x 2GB
AWS: 1Ins 1C +1.7GB or 3Ins x 0.5C 0.5GB
DO: Up to 5 GB RAM and 10 Cores
PB: 1C+1GB, RS: 1C+1GB,
Hetzner: 4C +12GB dedicated
OVH: 2C +16GB dedicated

23. Pricing - some spending money
Let`s see how much will 350$ will get you.
Ins=Instances, C=Cores, GB=Giga of RAM
SL: 8C+8GB or 4C 12GB dedicated.
Linode: UP to 16GB
AWS: 4C+15GB, GoGrid: 10C+10GB
DO: 15C+35GB (or 70x1c+0.5GB)
PB: from 1C+29GB to 9C+2GB, RS: 4C+8GB,
Hetzner: 3X 6C(12 threads) +64GB dedicated
OVH: 8C(16 threads) +256GB dedicated

24. Pricing, some thoughts
● More power you need - less attractive AWS
offering gets compared to other IaaS.
● IaaS is more attractive on variable needs,
once you know your demands - dedicated
costs less.
● Costs may or may not include traffic,
backups, support.

25. Misc things to consider
● Support. Do you need a helping hand?
● API. Will you use automation and to what
level?
● Pricing. How much money to invest in
studying and following pricing structure?

26. Wrapping ups
Will we make more benchmarks?
Yes, follow our twitter
@ForthScale
Or visit our website, next benchmark in series:
In-dept storage.
Can we help with *?
Yes we can! and we love to, so:

27. Forthscale contacts
Naor Weissmann
http://www.linkedin.com/in/naorweissmann
Cell: +972 (0)505 980005
Email: naorw@forthscale.com
EMEA office.
Email: info@forthscale.com
Web site: http://www.forthscale.com
Telephone: +972 (0)77 5280015