Performance reference for the Azure storage input in the Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Cloud Services

The following is reference information about Splunk's performance testing of the Azure storage input in the Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Cloud Services. The testing occurred with version 2.0.0, when the Azure storage input was first introduced. Use this information to enhance the performance of your own Azure storage data collection tasks.

Many factors impact performance results, including file size, file compression, event size, deployment architecture, and hardware. These results represent reference information and do not represent performance in all environments.

Testing Architecture

Splunk tested the performance of the Storage input using a single-instance Splunk Enterprise 6.4.3 on an C4 High-CPU Double Extra Large instance to ensure CPU, memory, storage, and network do not introduce any bottlenecks. Instance specs:

The EC2 in the testing environment is in the same area of Azure storage input, the network latency is low.

Instance type	C4 High-CPU Double Extra Large
Memory	15 GB
Compute Units (ECU)	31 Unit
Cores	8
Storage Type	GP2(SSD)
Architecture	64-bit
Network performance	High
EBS Optimized: Max Bandwidth	1000 Mbps

Test Environment

Deployment Type	Role	EC2 Type	Count
Standalone Deployment	Standalone	C4 High-CPU Double Extra Large	1

Testing Result

The detailed test result follows.

• The input number stands for the number of the inputs, one input collects one table.
• Each table contains 2,131,200 events.
• Each event is 500 Bytes.

Input Number	Throughput (MB/s)	Throughput (GB/day)	Throughput (Event/s)
1	3.44	290	7045
2	5.7	480	11670
4	6.84	577	14000
8	6.12	516	12533

The maximum throughput is 6.8MB/s with four data inputs. 100% higher than one data input. It can scale 100% with max throughput 577GB/day for single instance.

Testing Result for Azure Storage Blob inputs

The detailed test result follows.

• Each Blob input contains 259,202 events.
• Each event is 190 Bytes.

Blob Number	Blob Size	Input Number	Throughput (MB/s)	Throughput (GB/day)	Throughput (Event/s)
20	50 M	1	3.8 MB/s	320	21136
40	50 M	2	7.7 MB/s	650	42092
80	50 M	4	12.5 MB/s	1054	72960
160	50 M	8	12.1 MB/s	1020	66500

Using a large file size (50M in our test environment), the max throughput is 12.5MB/s with four data inputs, about 300% higher than the single input.