Cockroach Labs 2021 Cloud Report | Key Takeaways

The Cockroach Labs 2021 Cloud report is dense and data-driven, but you only need to remember one piece of information: Google Cloud was ranked number one. 

Just kidding! But really, it's an impressive, thoroughly researched Cloud report and it's worth your time to give it a read.

Now in its third year, the report evaluates the three big players - Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Azure - and aims to "tell a realistic and universal performance story on behalf of mission-critical online transactional processing (OLTP) applications."

C2C sat down with one of the authors, Product Manager John Kendall, to learn about what Google Cloud Platform does well. 

"We have no stake in any of the providers, so things surprised me throughout all the providers," Kendall said. "But what surprised me about Google Cloud Platform was they were the only provider to not have their Extreme PD [sku] option, yet they were still able to outperform across all the benchmarks." 

In terms of customer experience and support, Kendall noted how well Google Cloud Platform documented and set public expectations, calling it a "pleasant experience." 

"As far as Google's competitors, Kendall noted that AWS was the most cost-effective and Azure advanced ultra disks are worth the investment," Kendall added.

Other notable points from the report include: 

1. Google Cloud Platform wins fastest processing rates on four out of four of the report's benchmarks: network throughput, storage I/O read throughput, storage I/O write throughput, and maximum tpm throughput - a measure of throughput-per-minute (TPM) as defined by the Cockroach Labs Derivative of TPC-C.
2. This is an improvement from ranking third in 2020.
3. For the third year in a row, Google Cloud Platform won the network throughput benchmark, delivering nearly triple the throughput of either AWS or Azure. Notably, Google Cloud Platform's worst-performing machine for network throughput outpaced both AWS and Azure's best-performing machines.
4. Google Cloud Platform's general-purpose disk matched performance of advanced-disk offerings from AWS and Azure.

A note from Cockroach Labs:

"Our intention is to help our customers and any builder of OLTP applications understand the performance tradeoffs present within each cloud and within each cloud's individual machines."

Read the full report here and then join our C2C Connect groups to discuss the findings with your peers.

Extra Credit

Check out Google's announcement from Next On-Air, introducing its Extreme PD SKU.