Should I Run My Cloud Benchmark on Black Friday?

Abstract: Benchmarks and performance experiments are frequently conducted in cloud environments. However, their results are often treated with caution, as the presumed high variability of performance in the cloud raises concerns about reproducibility and credibility. In a recent study, we empirically quantified the impact of this variability on benchmarking results by repeatedly executing a stream processing application benchmark at different times of the day over several months. Our analysis confirms that performance variability is indeed observable at the application level, although it is less pronounced than often assumed. The larger scale of our study compared to related work allowed us to identify subtle daily and weekly performance patterns. We now extend this investigation by examining whether a major global event, such as Black Friday, affects the outcomes of performance benchmarks.