Australian researchers conducted a stress test on the platforms of todays major providers of cloud computing ending in interesting results. Among the testees were Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

The following results are part of a presentation the team will give at the Australian Architecture Forum in Sydney on Monday, August 24.

Major findings

• All platforms scaled gracefully under different loads. The tests were conducted simulating 2000 concurrent users.
• Response times depended heavily on the time of day and varied by factors of 20 (!) To exclude distorted results by accessing different geographic locations all durations were measured with on-platform utilities.

Interesting trivia:

• Google AppEngine disallows data processing to exceed a duration of 30 seconds. After that an exception is thrown.
• Monitoring is more than rudimentary on all platforms.

Sobering facts or expected »rusty start« of a new technology?