MySQL benchmarks using Amazon EC2 instances

Here are some tests I've run on Amazon using AMIs provided by scalr for the mysql role. I've used the benchmark scripts supplied by MySQL located in /usr/share/mysql/sql-bench. I had to install a package before running the tests:
apt-get install libdbd-pg-perl

After that everything was simple:
root@ec2# mysql
mysql> create database test;
mysql> quit;
root@ec2# cd /usr/share/mysql/sql-bench
root@ec2# perl run-all-tests --dir='/root/'


For EBS tests I've done the following:
-created 1GB EBS volume in scalr
-attached it to the instance I was testing
-notice the device name (/dev/sdb for example)
root@ec2# apt-get install xfsprogs
root@ec2# mkfs.xfs /dev/sdb
root@ec2# mkdir /mnt/storage
root@ec2# cp -R /var/lib/mysql /mnt/storage/
root@ec2# chown mysql:mysql -R /mnt/storage/mysql

-edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf and change datadir from "/var/lib/mysql" to "/mnt/storage/mysql"
-restart mysql server and start the tests:

root@ec2# /etc/init.d/mysql restart
root@ec2# mysql
mysql> drop database test;
mysql> create database test;
mysql> quit;
root@ec2# cd /usr/share/mysql/sql-bench
root@ec2# perl run-all-tests --dir='/root/'


Instances types used and their codes:

m1.small(0.10$/hour) - Small Instance (Default) 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

m1.large(0.40$/hour) - Large Instance 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

c1.medium(0.20$/hour) - High-CPU Medium Instance 1.7 GB of memory, 5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), 350 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

c1.xlarge(0.80$/hour) - High-CPU Extra Large Instance 7 GB of memory, 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) – One EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor.


seconds usr sys cpu tests
m1.small 1823 196.54 28.66 225.2 3425950
m1.small+ebs 1646 197.18 29.61 226.79 3425950
m1.large 1072 157.06 26.97 184.03 3425950
m1.large+ebs 1088 154.23 25.23 179.46 3425950
c1.medium 902 131.18 25.63 156.81 3425950
c1.medium+ebs 901 130.76 28.84 159.6 3425950
c1.xlarge 704 123.31 32.8 156.11 3425950
c1.xlarge+ebs 781 121.02 29.52 150.54 3425950

Bellow you can see a nice chart with how much time it took for each instance to finish the benchmark tests. Either I did something terribly wrong or EBS doesn't improve MySQL performance.