Benchmark Flink performance

Benchmark Apache Flink performance

This section walks you through running Apache Flink microbenchmarks on a Google Cloud Axion C4A (Arm64) SUSE VM. You will clone the official Flink-benchmarks repository, build the benchmark suite, and run the Remote Channel Throughput Benchmark.

Clone the repository

Clone the official Flink microbenchmarks repository:

    

        
        
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/apache/flink-benchmarks.git
cd flink-benchmarks

    

This repository contains microbenchmarks built using JMH (Java Microbenchmark Harness), widely used for JVM-level performance testing.

Build the benchmarks with Maven

Compile the benchmarks and create the executable JAR:

    

        
        
mvn clean package -DskipTests

    

What this does:

• clean removes previous build artifacts
• package compiles the code and produces benchmark JARs
• -DskipTests speeds up the build since unit tests aren’t needed for benchmarking

After building, the compiled benchmarks.jar files appear under:

    

        
        flink-benchmarks/target/

        
    

Explore the JAR contents

Verify that benchmarks.jar was generated:

    

        
        
cd target
ls

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        benchmark-0.1.jar  classes            generated-test-sources  maven-status         protoc-plugins
benchmarks.jar     generated-sources  maven-archiver          protoc-dependencies  test-classes

        
    

benchmarks.jar contains all Flink microbenchmarks packaged with JMH.

List available benchmarks

View all benchmarks included in the JAR:

    

        
        
java -jar benchmarks.jar -l

    

• -l → Lists all benchmarks packaged in the JAR.
• This helps you identify which benchmarks you want to execute on your VM.

Run the Remote Channel Throughput benchmark

While the Flink benchmarking project includes multiple suites for state backends, windowing, checkpointing, and scheduler performance, in this Learning path you will run the Remote Channel Throughput benchmark to evaluate network and I/O performance.

Remote Channel Throughput: This benchmark measures the data transfer rate between remote channels in Flink, helping to evaluate network and I/O performance.

Run the benchmark:

    

        
        
java -jar benchmarks.jar org.apache.flink.benchmark.RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        
Result "org.apache.flink.benchmark.RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance":
  10536.511 ±(99.9%) 60.121 ops/ms [Average]
  (min, avg, max) = (10289.593, 10536.511, 10687.736), stdev = 89.987
  CI (99.9%): [10476.390, 10596.633] (assumes normal distribution)

# Run complete. Total time: 00:25:14
Benchmark                                          (mode)   Mode  Cnt      Score     Error   Units
RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance  ALIGNED  thrpt   30  17445.341 ± 153.256  ops/ms
RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance  DEBLOAT  thrpt   30  10536.511 ±  60.121  ops/ms

        
    

Understand benchmark metrics

The output from the Remote Channel Throughput benchmark includes several statistical measures that help you interpret Flink’s performance on Arm64. Understanding these metrics enables you to assess both the average performance and the consistency of results across multiple iterations.

• Run Count: total benchmark iterations executed, higher count improves reliability.
• Average Throughput: mean operations per second across all iterations.
• Standard Deviation: variation from average throughput, smaller means more consistent.
• Confidence Interval (99.9%): range where the true average throughput lies with 99.9% certainty.
• Min Throughput: the lowest throughput was observed, and it shows worst-case performance.
• Max Throughput: highest throughput observed, shows best-case performance.

Benchmark summary for Arm64

Results from the run on the c4a-standard-4 (4 vCPU, 16 GB memory) Arm64 VM in GCP (SUSE) are summarized below:

What you’ve accomplished and what’s next

You’ve successfully deployed Apache Flink on a Google Axion C4A Arm-based virtual machine, validated its functionality, and measured its performance using JMH-based microbenchmarks. The benchmark results confirm that Google Axion C4A Arm-based instances deliver strong throughput in both ALIGNED and DEBLOAT modes, demonstrating that Arm64 architecture efficiently handles Flink’s remote channel throughput workloads.

Arm64 VMs are highly suitable for real-time Flink workloads, including streaming analytics, ETL pipelines, and JVM-based microbenchmarks. The consistent performance across different modes demonstrates that Arm-based infrastructure can effectively handle Flink’s demanding real-time processing requirements.