Performance and scale testing with Azure Cosmos DB

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APPLIES TO: NoSQL

Performance and scale testing is a key step in application development. For many applications, the database tier has a significant impact on overall performance and scalability. Therefore, it's a critical component of performance testing. Azure Cosmos DB is purpose-built for elastic scale and predictable performance. These capabilities make it a great fit for applications that need a high-performance database tier.

This article is a reference for developers implementing performance test suites for their Azure Cosmos DB workloads. It also can be used to evaluate Azure Cosmos DB for high-performance application scenarios. It focuses primarily on isolated performance testing of the database, but also includes best practices for production applications.

After reading this article, you'll be able to answer the following questions:

  • Where can I find a sample .NET client application for performance testing of Azure Cosmos DB?
  • How do I achieve high throughput levels with Azure Cosmos DB from my client application?

To get started with code, download the project from Azure Cosmos DB performance testing sample.

Note

The goal of this application is to demonstrate how to get the best performance from Azure Cosmos DB with a small number of client machines. The goal of the sample is not to achieve the peak throughput capacity of Azure Cosmos DB (which can scale without any limits).

If you're looking for client-side configuration options to improve Azure Cosmos DB performance, see Azure Cosmos DB performance tips.

Run the performance testing application

The quickest way to get started is to compile and run the .NET sample, as described in the following steps. You can also review the source code and implement similar configurations on your own client applications.

Step 1: Download the project from Azure Cosmos DB performance testing sample, or fork the GitHub repository.

Step 2: Modify the settings for EndpointUrl, AuthorizationKey, CollectionThroughput, and DocumentTemplate (optional) in App.config.

Note

Before you provision collections with high throughput, refer to the Pricing page to estimate the costs per collection. Azure Cosmos DB bills storage and throughput independently on an hourly basis. You can save costs by deleting or lowering the throughput of your Azure Cosmos DB containers after testing.

Step 3: Compile and run the console app from the command line. You should see output like the following:

C:\Users\cosmosdb\Desktop\Benchmark>DocumentDBBenchmark.exe
Summary:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Endpoint: https://arramacquerymetrics.documents.azure.cn:443/
Collection : db.data at 100000 request units per second
Document Template*: Player.json
Degree of parallelism*: -1
---------------------------------------------------------------------
DocumentDBBenchmark starting...
Found collection data with 100000 RU/s
Starting Inserts with 100 tasks
Inserted 4503 docs @ 4491 writes/s, 47070 RU/s (122B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 17910 docs @ 8862 writes/s, 92878 RU/s (241B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 32339 docs @ 10531 writes/s, 110366 RU/s (286B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 47848 docs @ 11675 writes/s, 122357 RU/s (317B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 58857 docs @ 11545 writes/s, 120992 RU/s (314B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 69547 docs @ 11378 writes/s, 119237 RU/s (309B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 80687 docs @ 11345 writes/s, 118896 RU/s (308B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 91455 docs @ 11272 writes/s, 118131 RU/s (306B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 102129 docs @ 11208 writes/s, 117461 RU/s (304B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 112444 docs @ 11120 writes/s, 116538 RU/s (302B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 122927 docs @ 11063 writes/s, 115936 RU/s (301B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 133157 docs @ 10993 writes/s, 115208 RU/s (299B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 144078 docs @ 10988 writes/s, 115159 RU/s (298B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 155415 docs @ 11013 writes/s, 115415 RU/s (299B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 166126 docs @ 10992 writes/s, 115198 RU/s (299B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 173051 docs @ 10739 writes/s, 112544 RU/s (292B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 180169 docs @ 10527 writes/s, 110324 RU/s (286B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 192469 docs @ 10616 writes/s, 111256 RU/s (288B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 199107 docs @ 10406 writes/s, 109054 RU/s (283B max monthly 1KB reads)
Inserted 200000 docs @ 9930 writes/s, 104065 RU/s (270B max monthly 1KB reads)

Summary:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Inserted 200000 docs @ 9928 writes/s, 104063 RU/s (270B max monthly 1KB reads)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
DocumentDBBenchmark completed successfully.
Press any key to exit...

Step 4 (if necessary): The throughput reported (RU/s) from the tool should be the same or higher than the provisioned throughput of the collection or a set of collections. If it's not, increasing the DegreeOfParallelism in small increments might help you reach the limit. If the throughput from your client app plateaus, start multiple instances of the app on additional client machines. If you need help with this step file a support ticket from the Azure portal.

After you have the app running, you can try different indexing policies and consistency levels to understand their impact on throughput and latency. You can also review the source code and implement similar configurations to your own test suites or production applications.

Next steps

In this article, we looked at how you can perform performance and scale testing with Azure Cosmos DB by using a .NET console app. For more information, see the following articles: