Performance Benchmarking with TPC-C

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This page shows you how to reproduce CockroachDB's TPC-C performance benchmarking results on commodity AWS hardware. Across all scales, CockroachDB can process tpmC (new order transactions per minute) at near maximum efficiency. Start by choosing the scale you're interested in:

Before you begin

• Review TPC-C concepts
• Request a trial license

Review TPC-C concepts

TPC-C provides the most realistic and objective measure for OLTP performance at various scale factors. Before you get started, consider reviewing what TPC-C is and how it is measured.

Request a trial license

Reproducing CockroachDB's 100,000 warehouse TPC-C results involves using CockroachDB's partitioning feature to ensure replicas for any given section of data are located on the same nodes that will be queried by the load generator for that section of data. Partitioning helps distribute the workload evenly across the cluster.

The partitioning feature requires an Enterprise license, so request a 30-day trial license before you get started.

You should receive your trial license via email within a few minutes. You'll enable your license once your cluster is up-and-running.

Step 1. Set up the environment

• Provision VMs
• Configure your network

Provision VMs

1. Create 86 VM instances, 81 for CockroachDB nodes and 5 for the TPC-C workload.

   • Create all instances in the same region and the same security group.
   • Use the c5d.9xlarge machine type.
   • Use local SSD instance store volumes. Local SSDs are low latency disks attached to each VM, which maximizes performance. This configuration best resembles what a bare metal deployment would look like, with machines directly connected to one physical disk each. We do not recommend using network-attached block storage.

2. Note the internal IP address of each instance. You'll need these addresses when starting the CockroachDB nodes.

Configure your network

CockroachDB requires TCP communication on two ports:

• 26257 for inter-node communication (i.e., working as a cluster) and for the TPC-C workload to connect to nodes
• 8080 for exposing your Admin UI

Create inbound rules for your security group:

Inter-node and TPCC-to-node communication

Admin UI

Step 2. Start CockroachDB

1. SSH to the first VM where you want to run a CockroachDB node.

2. Download the CockroachDB archive for Linux, extract the binary, and copy it into the PATH:

   $ curl https://binaries.cockroachdb.com/cockroach-v20.1.17.linux-amd64.tgz \
   | tar -xz
   

   $ cp -i cockroach-v20.1.17.linux-amd64/cockroach /usr/local/bin/
   

   If you get a permissions error, prefix the command with sudo.

3. Run the cockroach start command:

   $ cockroach start \
   --insecure \
   --advertise-addr=<node1 internal address> \
   --join=<node1 internal address>,<node2 internal address>,<node3 internal address> \
   --cache=.25 \
   --max-sql-memory=.25 \
   --locality=rack=0 \
   --background
   

   Each node will start with a locality that includes an artificial "rack number" (e.g., --locality=rack=0). Use 27 racks for 81 nodes so that 3 nodes will be assigned to each rack.

4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 for the other 80 VMs for CockroachDB nodes. Each time, be sure to:

   • Adjust the --advertise-addr flag.
   • Set the --locality flag to the appropriate "rack number", as described above.

5. On any of the VMs with the cockroach binary, run the one-time cockroach init command to join the first nodes into a cluster:

   $ cockroach init --insecure --host=<address of any node>
   

Step 3. Configure the cluster

You'll be importing a large TPC-C data set. To speed that up, you can temporarily disable replication and tweak some cluster settings. You'll also need to enable the enterprise license you requested earlier.

1. SSH to any VM with the cockroach binary.

2. Launch the built-in SQL shell:

   $ cockroach sql --insecure --host=<address of any node>
   

3. Disable replication:

   > ALTER RANGE default CONFIGURE ZONE USING num_replicas = 1;
   

4. Adjust some cluster settings:

   > SET CLUSTER SETTING rocksdb.ingest_backpressure.l0_file_count_threshold = 100;
   SET CLUSTER SETTING rocksdb.ingest_backpressure.pending_compaction_threshold = '5 GiB';
   SET CLUSTER SETTING schemachanger.backfiller.max_buffer_size = '5 GiB';
   SET CLUSTER SETTING kv.snapshot_rebalance.max_rate = '128 MiB';
   SET CLUSTER SETTING rocksdb.min_wal_sync_interval = '500us';
   

5. Enable the trial license you requested earlier:

   > SET CLUSTER SETTING cluster.organization = '<your organization>';
   

   > SET CLUSTER SETTING enterprise.license = '<your license key>';
   

6. Exit the SQL shell:

   > \q
   

Step 4. Import the TPC-C dataset

CockroachDB offers a pre-built workload binary for Linux that includes the TPC-C benchmark. You'll need to put the binary on the VMs for importing the dataset and running TPC-C.

1. SSH to one of the VMs where you want to run TPC-C.

2. Download the workload binary for Linux and make it executable:

   $ wget https://edge-binaries.cockroachdb.com/cockroach/workload.LATEST -O workload; chmod 755 workload
   

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for the other 4 VMs where you'll run TPC-C.

4. On one of the VMs with the workload binary, import the TPC-C dataset:

   $ ./workload fixtures import tpcc \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   "postgres://root@<address of any CockroachDB node>:26257?sslmode=disable"
   

   This will load 8TB of data for 100,000 "warehouses". This can take around 6 hours to complete.

   You can monitor progress on the Jobs screen of the Admin UI. Open the Admin UI by pointing a browser to the address in the admin field in the standard output of any node on startup.

Step 5. Partition the database

Next, partition your database to divide all of the TPC-C tables and indexes into 27 partitions, one per rack, and then use zone configurations to pin those partitions to a particular rack.

1. Re-enable 3-way replication:

   1. SSH to any VM with the cockroach binary.

   2. Launch the built-in SQL shell:

      $ cockroach sql --insecure --host=<address of any node>
      

   3. Enable replication:

      > ALTER RANGE default CONFIGURE ZONE USING num_replicas = 3;
      

   4. Exit the SQL shell:

      > \q
      

2. On one of the VMs with the workload binary, briefly run TPC-C to set up partitioning:

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --duration 1m \
   --ramp 1ms \
   "postgres://root@<address of any CockroachDB node>:26257?sslmode=disable"
   

3. Wait for up-replication and partitioning to finish.

   This will likely take 10s of minutes. To watch the progress, go to the Metrics > Queues > Replication Queue graph in the Admin UI. Once the Replication Queue gets to 0 for all actions and stays there, you can move on to the next step.

Step 6. Re-start CockroachDB

At the moment, running TPC-C against CockroachDB at this scale requires customizations that are not in the latest official release, so you'll need to stop the cluster, put a new binary with these patches on the 81 VMs for CockroachDB, and then restart the cluster.

1. SSH to the first VM where CockroachDB is running.

2. Stop the cockroach process:

   $ cockroach quit --insecure
   

3. Rename the old binary:

   $ i="$(which cockroach)"; mv "$i" "$i"_old
   

4. Download the new binary, rename it, and copy it into the PATH:

   $ wget https://edge-binaries.cockroachdb.com/cockroach/cockroach.linux-gnu-amd64.9582884c143639d3acc85a7ba1a829fb5a5ae9dd ; chmod 755 cockroach.linux-gnu-amd64.9582884c143639d3acc85a7ba1a829fb5a5ae9dd
   

   $ cp -i cockroach.linux-gnu-amd64.9582884c143639d3acc85a7ba1a829fb5a5ae9dd /usr/local/bin/cockroach
   

   If you get a permissions error, prefix the command with sudo.

5. Re-start the node, using the same cockroach start command you used the first time you started the node:

   $ cockroach start \
   --insecure \
   --advertise-addr=<node1 internal address> \
   --join=<node1 internal address>,<node2 internal address>,<node3 internal address> \
   --cache=.25 \
   --max-sql-memory=.25 \
   --locality=rack=0 \
   --background
   

6. Repeat steps 1 - 5 for the other 80 VMs for CockroachDB nodes. Each time, be sure to use the cockroach start command you used the first time you started the node.

Step 7. Allocate partitions

Before running the benchmark, it's important to allocate partitions to workload binaries properly to ensure that the cluster is balanced.

1. Create an addrs file containing connection strings to all 81 CockroachDB nodes:

   postgres://root@<node 1 internal address>:26257?sslmode=disable postgres://root@<node 2 internal address>:26257?sslmode=disable postgres://root@<node 3 internal address>:26257?sslmode=disable postgres://root@<node 4 internal address>:26257?sslmode=disable ...
   

2. Upload the addrs file to the 5 VMs with the workload binary:

   $ scp addrs <username>@<workload instance 1 address>:.
   

   $ scp addrs <username>@<workload instance 2 address>:.
   

   $ scp addrs <username>@<workload instance 3 address>:.
   

   $ scp addrs <username>@<workload instance 4 address>:.
   

   $ scp addrs <username>@<workload instance 5 address>:.
   

3. SSH to each VM with workload and allocate partitions:

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --partition-affinity 0,5,10,15,20,25 \
   --ramp 30m \
   --duration 1ms \
   $(cat addrs)
   

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --partition-affinity 1,6,11,16,21,26 \
   --ramp 30m \
   --duration 1ms \
   $(cat addrs)
   

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --partition-affinity 2,7,12,17,22 \
   --ramp 30m \
   --duration 1ms \
   $(cat addrs)
   

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --partition-affinity 3,8,13,18,23 \
   --ramp 30m \
   --duration 1ms \
   $(cat addrs)
   

   $ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
   --partitions 27 \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   --partition-affinity 4,9,14,19,24 \
   --ramp 30m \
   --duration 1ms \
   $(cat addrs)
   

Step 8. Run the benchmark

Once the allocations finish, run TPC-C for 30 minutes on each VM with workload:

$ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
--partitions 27 \
--warehouses 100000 \
--partition-affinity 0,5,10,15,20,25 \
--ramp 1m \
--duration 30m \
--histograms workload1.histogram.ndjson \
$(cat addrs)

$ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
--partitions 27 \
--warehouses 100000 \
--partition-affinity 1,6,11,16,21,26 \
--ramp 1m \
--duration 30m \
--histograms workload2.histogram.ndjson \
$(cat addrs)

$ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
--partitions 27 \
--warehouses 100000 \
--partition-affinity 2,7,12,17,22 \
--ramp 1m \
--duration 30m \
--histograms workload3.histogram.ndjson \
$(cat addrs)

$ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
--partitions 27 \
--warehouses 100000 \
--partition-affinity 3,8,13,18,23 \
--ramp 1m \
--duration 30m \
--histograms workload4.histogram.ndjson \
$(cat addrs)

$ ulimit -n 200500 && ./workload run tpcc \
--partitions 27 \
--warehouses 100000 \
--partition-affinity 4,9,14,19,24 \
--ramp 1m \
--duration 30m \
--histograms workload5.histogram.ndjson \
$(cat addrs)

Step 9. Interpret the results

1. Collect the result files from each VM with workload:

   $ scp <username>@<workload instance 1 address>:workload1.histogram.ndjson .
   

   $ scp <username>@<workload instance 2 address>:workload2.histogram.ndjson .
   

   $ scp <username>@<workload instance 3 address>:workload3.histogram.ndjson .
   

   $ scp <username>@<workload instance 4 address>:workload4.histogram.ndjson .
   

   $ scp <username>@<workload instance 5 address>:workload5.histogram.ndjson .
   

2. Upload the result files to one of the VMs with the workload binary:

   Note:

   The commands below assume you're uploading to the VM with the workload1.histogram.ndjson file.

   $ scp workload2.histogram.ndjson <username>@<workload instance 2 address>:.
   

   $ scp workload3.histogram.ndjson <username>@<workload instance 3 address>:.
   

   $ scp workload4.histogram.ndjson <username>@<workload instance 4 address>:.
   

   $ scp workload5.histogram.ndjson <username>@<workload instance 5 address>:.
   

3. SSH to the VM where you uploaded the results files.

4. Run the workload debug tpcc-merge-results command to synthesize the results:

   $ ./workload debug tpcc-merge-results \
   --warehouses 100000 \
   workload*.histogram.ndjson
   

   You'll should see results similar to the following, with 1.2M tpmC, a nearly perfect score:

   Duration: 1h0m0, Warehouses: 100000, Efficiency: 98.81, tpmC: 1245461.78
   _elapsed___ops/sec(cum)__p50(ms)__p90(ms)__p95(ms)__p99(ms)_pMax(ms)
    3600.1s        2082.1  151.0   369.1   453.0   637.5   5100.3 delivery
    3600.1s        20757.7 167.8   402.7   486.5   671.1   8321.5 newOrder
    3600.1s        2083.2  9.4     62.9    92.3    159.4   1073.7 orderStatus
    3600.1s        20829.5 100.7   251.7   318.8   469.8   7516.2 payment
    3600.1s        2082.8  29.4    100.7   142.6   234.9 103079.2 stockLevel
   

See also

• Performance Overview

• Hardware

  CockroachDB works well on commodity hardware in public cloud, private cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments. For hardware recommendations, see our Production Checklist.

  Also note that CockroachDB creates a yearly cloud report focused on evaluating hardware performance. For more information, see the 2020 Cloud Report.

• Performance Tuning

  For guidance on tuning a real workload's performance, see SQL Best Practices, and for guidance on data location techniques to minimize network latency, see Topology Patterns.

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