AWS Graviton Performance Testing: Tips for Independent Software Vendors

Publication date: September 15, 2021 (Document history)

This whitepaper is for decision makers and builders at independent software vendors (ISVs) who are unsure about how to evaluate Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance performance and want to learn about best practices and common pitfalls.

The evolving price performance of Amazon EC2 instance types leads to better performance at lower cost for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. Using the example of AWS Graviton, this whitepaper shows how to define your test approach when evaluating EC2 instances, set success factors, and compare different test methods and their implementation.

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Introduction

AWS Graviton processors are custom-built by AWS to deliver the best price performance for cloud workloads running in Amazon EC2. Better price performance translates into cost savings for customers, enabling independent software vendors (ISVs) whose platforms run on AWS to reduce their cost of goods sold (COGS).

It can also provide a better experience for ISV customers. Many ISVs run their own performance testing efforts to evaluate the price performance of Graviton and to model the impact of unit cost reduction and performance-related reductions in fleet sizes on their bottom line. This paper provides an overview of Amazon EC2 performance testing best practices and common pitfalls to help you obtain reliable, actionable results.

This paper begins the discussion by introducing a set of key concepts (layers of a typical ISV software stack) and then moves to a discussion of performance testing steps and best practices (define, implement, instrument, run, and visualize performance tests).