PolarDB:Performance test report

Test model and metrics

• Benchmark tool: OLTPBench, using the TPC-C workload model

• Data volume: 1,000 TPC-C warehouses; 300 million rows in the bmsql_order_line table, 100 million rows in bmsql_stock

• Performance metric: Transactions per second (TPS)

Test environment

The test client (Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance) and the PolarDB-X instance run in the same virtual private cloud (VPC) and region to minimize network latency.

This test configuration is designed for benchmarking only. It is not a production deployment recommendation.

Test scenarios

The tests cover three encryption ratios to simulate different data sensitivity requirements:

• 20% column encryption: Encrypts key identifier fields, such as IDs and order numbers.

• 50% column encryption: In addition to the 20% scenario, encrypts business data such as prices, dates, and quantities.

• 100% column encryption: Encrypts all fields in all tables.

Overall performance (100% column encryption vs. plaintext)

With all columns encrypted, TPS degrades by approximately 10% compared to plaintext across all tested configurations.

2 × (4-core, 32 GB)

4 × (8-core, 64 GB)

Observations

At high concurrency (1,024 threads), overhead on the 2 × (4-core, 32 GB) instance drops to 4%—lower than at lower concurrency levels. At very high concurrency, the bottleneck shifts from encryption computation to contention and scheduling within the database and client. As a result, encryption overhead becomes a smaller fraction of total latency, and the measured TPS gap narrows.

EncJDBC driver overhead (plaintext)

Switching to the EncJDBC driver introduces additional client CPU consumption even when no encryption is active.

Test conditions: Client instance type is ecs.c7.4xlarge (16 cores, 32 GB); concurrency is 1,024.

Plan for this baseline CPU increase when sizing your application instances, even before enabling encryption.

Client resource consumption with 100% encryption

Enabling 100% column encryption significantly increases client-side CPU usage. Make sure your application has enough CPU headroom to absorb this increase.

Test conditions: Concurrency is 1,024.

Full encryption increases client CPU consumption by 56%–157%, with the peak exceeding 1.5×.

Impact of encryption ratio on performance and resources

The number of encrypted columns directly affects both TPS and client CPU usage.

Test conditions: Concurrency is 1,024.

2 × (4-core, 32 GB)

4 × (8-core, 64 GB)

Encrypt only the columns that contain sensitive data. Encrypting 20%–50% of columns delivers strong data protection at 2%–8% TPS overhead, which is significantly lower than the 4%–11% overhead of 100% encryption.

Applicable configurations

This appendix describes how to reproduce the benchmark results in this report. The test uses the following configurations:

If your instance size or workload differs significantly, the absolute TPS values will not match, but the relative overhead percentages should remain representative.

Step 1: Prepare the ECS client

Prepare an ECS instance. This instance is used for data import and running the benchmark.

Supported architectures and operating systems:

x86: CentOS 7.9 or later, Alibaba Cloud Linux 3, Ubuntu 18.0 or later

ARM: CentOS 8.0 or later

Deploy the ECS instance in a VPC. Note the VPC name and ID—all subsequent resources must use the same VPC.

Assign a public IP address to the ECS instance so you can access the benchmark tool from it.

Step 2: Prepare the PolarDB-X instance

1. Create a PolarDB-X instance. Deploy it in the same VPC as the ECS instance.

2. Add the internal IP address of the ECS instance to the whitelist of the PolarDB-X instance.

3. Create the test database:

   CREATE DATABASE tpcc_1000 MODE = 'auto';

Step 3: Prepare the benchmark data

1. Download and extract the benchmark tool. On the ECS instance, download the benchmarksql.tar.gz package and extract it:

   tar xzvf benchmarksql.tar.gz

2. Download the EncJDBC driver. Download aliyun-encdb-mysql-jdbc-1.0.9-2-20240910.094626-1.jar and move it to the benchmarksql/lib folder.

3. Configure the test parameters. Go to the benchmarksql/run folder and edit props.mysql:

   Placeholder	Description	Example
   {HOST}	PolarDB-X instance endpoint	pc-xxx.polardbx.rds.aliyuncs.com
   {PORT}	Connection port	3306
   {MEK}	Master encryption key (MEK): a 32-character hexadecimal string	a1b2c3d4e5f6...
   {ENC_ALGO}	Symmetric encryption algorithm	SM4_128_GCM
   {USER}	Database username	tpcc_user
   {PASSWORD}	Database password	—

   Parameter	Description
   warehouses	Number of TPC-C warehouses, which determines data volume
   loadWorkers	Number of concurrent threads for data import
   terminals	Number of concurrent threads for the test run
   runMins	Test duration in minutes

   cd benchmarksql/run
   vi props.mysql

   Update the configuration to match your environment:

   db=mysql
   driver=com.aliyun.encdb.mysql.jdbc.EncDriver
   conn=jdbc:mysql:encdb://{HOST}:{PORT}/tpcc_1000_enc?/MEK={MEK}&ENC_ALGO={ENC_ALGO}&useSSL=false&useServerPrepStmts=false&useConfigs=maxPerformance&rewriteBatchedStatements=true
   user={USER}
   password={PASSWORD}
   
   warehouses=1000
   loadWorkers=100
   
   terminals=128
   //To run specified transactions per terminal- runMins must equal zero
   runTxnsPerTerminal=0
   //To run for specified minutes- runTxnsPerTerminal must equal zero
   runMins=5
   //Number of total transactions per minute
   limitTxnsPerMin=0
   
   //Set to true to run in 4.x compatible mode. Set to false to use the
   //entire configured database evenly.
   terminalWarehouseFixed=true
   
   //The following five values must add up to 100
   //The default percentages of 45, 43, 4, 4 & 4 match the TPC-C spec
   newOrderWeight=45
   paymentWeight=43
   orderStatusWeight=4
   deliveryWeight=4
   stockLevelWeight=4
   
   // Directory name to create for collecting detailed result data.
   // Comment this out to suppress.
   resultDirectory=my_result_%tY-%tm-%td_%tH%tM%tS
   
   // osCollectorScript=./misc/os_collector_linux.py
   // osCollectorInterval=1
   // osCollectorSSHAddr=user@dbhost
   // osCollectorDevices=net_eth0 blk_sda

   Replace the following placeholders with your values: Other key parameters:

4. Import the test data.

   cd benchmarksql/run/sql.common
   cp tableCreates.sql.auto tableCreates.sql
   cd ..
   nohup ./runDatabaseBuild.sh props.mysql &

5. Verify data integrity. After the import completes, connect to the PolarDB-X instance and run the following SQL queries. If all queries return an empty result set, the data was imported successfully.

   SELECT a.* FROM (SELECT w_id, w_ytd FROM bmsql_warehouse) a LEFT JOIN (SELECT d_w_id, sum(d_ytd) AS d_ytd_sum FROM bmsql_district GROUP BY d_w_id) b ON a.w_id = b.d_w_id AND a.w_ytd = b.d_ytd_sum WHERE b.d_w_id IS NULL;
   
   SELECT a.* FROM (SELECT d_w_id, d_id, D_NEXT_O_ID - 1 AS d_n_o_id FROM bmsql_district) a LEFT JOIN (SELECT o_w_id, o_d_id, max(o_id) AS o_id_max FROM bmsql_oorder GROUP BY  o_w_id, o_d_id) b ON a.d_w_id = b.o_w_id AND a.d_id = b.o_d_id AND a.d_n_o_id = b.o_id_max WHERE b.o_w_id IS NULL;
   
   SELECT a.* FROM (SELECT d_w_id, d_id, D_NEXT_O_ID - 1 AS d_n_o_id FROM bmsql_district) a LEFT JOIN (SELECT no_w_id, no_d_id, max(no_o_id) AS no_id_max FROM bmsql_new_order GROUP BY no_w_id, no_d_id) b ON a.d_w_id = b.no_w_id AND a.d_id = b.no_d_id AND a.d_n_o_id = b.no_id_max WHERE b.no_id_max IS NULL;
   
   SELECT * FROM (SELECT (count(no_o_id)-(max(no_o_id)-min(no_o_id)+1)) AS diff FROM bmsql_new_order GROUP BY no_w_id, no_d_id) a WHERE diff != 0;
   
   SELECT a.* FROM (SELECT o_w_id, o_d_id, sum(o_ol_cnt) AS o_ol_cnt_cnt FROM bmsql_oorder  GROUP BY o_w_id, o_d_id) a LEFT JOIN (SELECT ol_w_id, ol_d_id, count(ol_o_id) AS ol_o_id_cnt FROM bmsql_order_line GROUP BY ol_w_id, ol_d_id) b ON a.o_w_id = b.ol_w_id AND a.o_d_id = b.ol_d_id AND a.o_ol_cnt_cnt = b.ol_o_id_cnt WHERE b.ol_w_id IS NULL;
   
   SELECT a.* FROM (SELECT d_w_id, sum(d_ytd) AS d_ytd_sum FROM bmsql_district GROUP BY d_w_id) a LEFT JOIN (SELECT w_id, w_ytd FROM bmsql_warehouse) b ON a.d_w_id = b.w_id AND a.d_ytd_sum = b.w_ytd WHERE b.w_id IS NULL;

Step 4: Run the test

Run the TPC-C benchmark:

cd benchmarksql/run
./runBenchmark.sh props.mysql

During the test, the terminal shows live throughput in transactions per minute (tpmC). After the 5-minute test completes, the tool prints a summary with the final average tpmC value. To convert tpmC to TPS, divide by 60.

The output looks similar to the following. Live progress lines scroll continuously during the run; the summary line appears after the test exits.

Running for 300 seconds. Progress is logged every 60 seconds.

Term-00, Running Average tpmTOTAL: 5,400,000.00    Current tpmTOTAL: 5,400,000    Memory Usage: 1001MB / 1877MB
...
Term-00, Measured tpmC (NewOrders) = 1,609,920.00
Term-00, Measured tpmTotal = 3,574,200.00
Term-00, Session Start     = yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
Term-00, Session End       = yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
Term-00, Transaction Count = nnnnnnn

Continuous output scrolling to the terminal during the test run is normal. The test is complete when the summary line appears and the process exits.