Rapidminer Cloud execution time

al

Good news Cloud started today!

However, execution times/prices seems a bit strange.  Let's make a simple test with learining process:

my laptop - 1.08 min
cloud regular (15gb) - 1.11 min (run1), 1.11 min (run2)
cloud x-large (64gb) - 2.04 min (run1), 1.45 min (run2)

I can't get why my laptop with i7 is faster than a cloud, why regular cloud is faster than x-large, and finally why should I pay 8 credits (3.2$) for the same I can do with my laptop for free two times faster.  Am I doing something wrong ? 

Thanks,
Alex

jonogallagher

Hello and thank you for your questions about RapidMiner Cloud.

Let us answer your questions and shed some more light on the RapidMiner Cloud offering.

There are a few things you should keep in mind when making these kind of comparisons:

1) The Cloud machines may have to be spawned when needed. Depending on the current usage, your job may immediately get a free machine or it will have to wait for a new one to spawn and be prepared. This can take a couple of minutes before your job is actually executed. However this time is NOT included in the consumed time of your process, so you do not pay for that.

2) Jobs you submit to the Cloud run in a fully virtualized environment to protect the integrity of your own job and any subsequent jobs. This reduces performance a bit, but it provides a major boost in security.

3) Once the machine is prepared, your job will be started on the machine in question. However this does not yet equal the press of your local "Play" button, as a fresh execution environment needs to be set up first. While this does not take long, it takes a few seconds.

Taking the above factors into account, the execution time of your process actually beat your state-of-the-art laptop by a few seconds.

Regarding the next question, why was X-Large slower than Regular? Of course we also ran a multitude of performance tests on these machines, so here is what is going on:

1) Your process is very short. Couple this with full virtualization and you are bound to get some time variance. In our tests for equal jobs (which were not maxing out memory usage) X-Large was usually faster, however there were also times where Regular beat X-Large.

2) In terms of computing power, all machines use state-of-the-art Intel Server CPUs. The real difference (as shown in the description of each machine) is the available memory. If you submit a job that is not memory bound, your best bet is a Regular machine.

On to your last question, why should you push processes to RapidMiner Cloud? Let's go through some scenarios where the Cloud will come in quite handy!

- You can use operators otherwise limited to bigger licenses. For example you can access Twitter with a RapidMiner Starter license, as long as you have an active Cloud subscription. Or if you need one-time access to a data source you cannot access with your current license you can do so with RapidMiner Cloud. Executing a process with a RapidMiner Cloud subscription will allow you to access any data source supported by RapidMiner Studio!
- You can execute multiple processes at the same time
- You can run your processes on machines that have way more memory than your average desktop/laptop
- You don't need to worry about technical issues you might otherwise experience if you were to setup, use and maintain your own server
- You don't pay for any idle time as you would with your own Server. Taking setup, maintenance and configuration as well as hardware and license costs into account, your own server(s) can quickly add up to quite a high total cost of ownership.

We hope that this information sheds some light on using RapidMiner Cloud.

The RapidMiner Team