BenchmarkXPRT Blog banner

Month: February 2021

The CloudXPRT v1.1 beta is available!

Last week, we announced that a CloudXPRT v1.1 beta was on the way. We’re happy to say that the v1.1 beta is now available to the public on a dedicated CloudXPRT v1.1 beta download page. While CloudXPRT v1.01 remains the officially supported version on CloudXPRT.com and in our GitHub repository, interested testers can use the v1.1 beta version in new environments as we finalize the v1.1 build for official release. You are welcome to publish results as we do not expect results to change in the final, official release.

As we mentioned in last week’s post, the CloudXPRT v1.1 beta includes the following changes:

  • We’ve added support for Ubuntu 20.04.2 or later for on-premises testing.
  • We’ve consolidated and standardized the installation packages for both workloads. Instead of one package for the data analytics workload and four separate packages for the web microservices workload, each workload has a single installation package that supports on-premises testing and testing with all three supported CSPs.
  • We’ve incorporated Terraform to help create and configure VMs, which helps to prevent problems when testers do not allocate enough storage per VM prior to testing.
  • We’ve replaced the Calico network plugin in Kubespray with Weave, which helps to avoid some of the network issues testers have occasionally encountered in the CPS environment.

Please feel free to share the link to the beta download page. (To avoid confusion, the beta will not appear in the main CloudXPRT download table.) We can’t yet state definitively whether results from the new version will be comparable to those from v1.01. We have not observed any significant differences in performance, but we haven’t tested every possible test configuration across every platform. If you observe different results when testing the same configuration with v1.01 and v1.1 beta, please send us the details so we can investigate.

If you have any questions about CloudXPRT or the CloudXPRT v1.1 beta, please let us know!

Justin

The CloudXPRT v1.1 beta is on the way

As we’ve been working on improvements and updates for CloudXPRT, we’ve been using feedback from community members to determine which changes will help testers most in the short term. To make some of those changes available to the community as soon as possible, we plan to release a beta version of CloudXPRT v1.1 in the coming weeks.

During the v1.1 beta period, the CloudXPRT v1.01 installation packages on CloudXPRT.com and our GitHub repository will continue to include the officially supported version of CloudXPRT. However, interested testers can experiment with the v1.1 beta version in new environments while we finalize the build for official release. 

The CloudXPRT v1.1 beta includes the following primary changes:

  • We’re adding support for Ubuntu 20.04.2 or later, the number one request we’ve received.
  • We’re consolidating and standardizing the installation packages for both workloads. Instead of one package for the data analytics workload and four separate packages for the web microservices workload, each workload will have two installation packages: one for all on-premises testing and one for testing with all three supported CSPs.
  • We’re incorporating Terraform to help create and configure VMs, which will help to prevent situations when testers do not allocate enough storage per VM prior to testing.
  • We use Kubespray to manage Kubernetes clusters, and Kubespray uses Calico as the default network plug in. Calico has not always worked well for CloudXPRT in the CSP environment, so we’re replacing Calico with Weave.


At the start of the beta period, we will share a link to the v1.1 beta download page here in the blog. You’ll be free to share this link. To avoid confusion, we will not add the beta download to the v1.01 downloads available on CloudXPRT.com.

As the beta release date approaches, we’ll share more details about timelines, access, and any additional changes to the benchmark. If you have any questions about the upcoming CloudXPRT v1.1 beta, please let us know!

Justin

We’ve fixed an installation bug in the CloudXPRT Data Analytics Workload package

Yesterday, we published an updated CloudXPRT Data Analytics workload package that fixes a problem during the package installation process. CloudXPRT uses the Helm utility, which serves as a package manager for the Kubernetes container orchestration system. Helm accesses files in a default repository, and the version of Helm that we originally used with CloudXPRT tries to access files that are no longer available. We fixed the problem by updating the code to use the latest version of Helm.

This update does not change how the benchmark workload runs, and has no impact on benchmark results. We apologize if this bug caused headaches for any testers during installation, and we appreciate your patience as we worked on a fix.

As a reminder for testers interested in experimenting with the CloudXPRT Data Analytics workload, the Overview of the CloudXPRT Data Analytics Workload paper is now available. You can find links to the paper and other resources in the Helpful Info box on CloudXPRT.com and the CloudXPRT section of our XPRT white papers page.

If you have any questions, or have encountered any obstacles during testing, please let us know!

Justin

Check out the other XPRTs:

Forgot your password?