How to choose a Cloud Provider

The wonderful site, http://cloudharmony.com/speedtest/run allows you to run tests on latency, small and large file download speed. Depending on the nature of your application, the choice of a provider is crucial (of course price is another important factor).

In the tests, Large File Download category, Amazon S3 is the winner with an average of 15.33 Mb/s. This might be suitable for applications working with large files (pdfs, catalogs, repositories).

Windows Azure Service is the winner of the small file category with around 2.5 Mb/s. The difference between the large and small file is significant. This order of magnitude difference is probably due to the overhead of authentication, establishing a connection etc. Once the pipe is secure and ready, you are probably bound to the limitations of your IPO as well as the cloud service provider's SLA.

Latency might be a concern for high throughput applications - I would argue that self-hosting or keeping the applications close behind the scenes might be a better choice than putting a cloud between your data and application. If it is not avoidable, though, Amazon S3 seems to be offering the best (minimum) latency. This (and the file download times) is impacted by the Geographical designation of the applications and their clients. Clearly as the audience grows, one might want to implement load balancing facilities to route users to the closest cloud servers (S3 offers service in CA and VA for instance)

Great tool Cloud Harmony!!

Large File Download Tests

Service	Location	Time (secs)	# of Samples	Transferred (MB)	Min Mb/s	Max Mb/s	Std Dev	Median Mb/s	Avg Mb/s
Simple Storage Service (S3)	VA, US	10.39	4	19.99	13.18	17.71	13.06%	16.13	15.33
Nirvanix SDN									Test Failed
HP Cloud Object Storage	AZ, US	8.12	4	2.49	1.77	3.17	24.64%	2.56	2.42
Windows Azure Storage	TX, US	10.18	4	9.63	6.11	8.17	12.71%	8.06	7.5
Internap Cloud Storage		6.4	4	5.35	3.81	14.29	66.31%	6.06	7.23
Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage		7.89	4	6.29	5.57	8.26	19.6%	5.91	6.39
Simple Storage Service (S3)	CA, US	8.93	4	6.28	3.86	7.56	27.44%	7.39	6.22
Box.net		7.33	4	4.48	2.6	6.26	35.75%	5.6	4.61
Google Storage for Developers		8.2	4	11.04	6.74	15.27	37.68%	12.4	10.56
Windows Azure Storage	IL, US	8.64	4	12.58	9.59	12.36	10.65%	11.68	11.14

Small File Download Tests

Service	Location	Time (secs)	# of Samples	Transferred (MB)	Min Mb/s	Max Mb/s	Std Dev	Median Mb/s	Avg Mb/s
HP Cloud Object Storage	AZ, US	5.91	9	0.69	0.51	1.47	41.31%	0.85	0.97
Google Storage for Developers		5.27	11	0.74	0.81	2.74	42.41%	1.23	1.28
Box.net		9.57	7	0.57	0.28	0.69	28.24%	0.53	0.5
Internap Cloud Storage		6.55	10	0.6	0.43	1.08	31.46%	0.88	0.79
Simple Storage Service (S3)	VA, US	7.28	13	0.69	0.67	2.71	37.89%	1.77	1.64
Windows Azure Storage	IL, US	3.38	13	0.81	1.17	4.23	44.77%	2.61	2.52
Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage		4.62	11	0.79	0.7	2.53	41.96%	1.45	1.62
Nirvanix SDN									Test Failed
Simple Storage Service (S3)	CA, US	6.47	10	0.57	0.29	1.31	56.2%	0.59	0.75
Windows Azure Storage	TX, US	4.91	11	0.73	0.83	2.36	37.67%	1.15	1.39

Network Latency Tests

Service	Location	Time (secs)	# of Samples	Min ms	Max ms	Std Dev	Median ms	Avg ms
HP Cloud Object Storage	AZ, US	0.6	5	98	100	0.85%	99	98.8
Simple Storage Service (S3)	VA, US	0.43	7	41	50	6.49%	44	44.86
Simple Storage Service (S3)	CA, US	0.7	5	109	121	3.86%	117	116
Windows Azure Storage	IL, US	0.46	6	48	57	7.64%	50	51.5
Box.net		1.09	3	260	276	3.19%	263	266.33
Nirvanix SDN								Test Failed
Internap Cloud Storage		0.75	4	91	180	38.83%	92	113.75
Windows Azure Storage	TX, US	0.53	5	70	73	1.6%	71	71.4
Google Storage for Developers		0.61	6	52	57	3.98%	54	54.33
Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage		0.48	4	90	91	0.55%	91	90.75