Just done a few comparisons between DigitalOcean’s Droplets and some hardware I have access to. I compiled my current project - still quite small - after having run mix clean --deps, and then ran time mix. Seconds are the “real” time.
Caveat: Yes, I realise this test is abstract and only one data point, but I feel it’s sufficiently real-world to answer my questions.
$20 DO server
2 vCPU - 4GB
34.56 seconds
$320 DO CPU optimised server
16 vCPU - 32GB
21.18 seconds
2014 Mac Mini on High Sierra
1.4Ghz dual-core Intel i5 - 4GB 1600MHz DDR3
28.69 seconds
2015 15" MacBook Pro on High Sierra
2.5Ghz quad-core Intel i7 - 16GB 16MHz DDR3
18.2 seconds
On that basis, there’s either a hefty cost in running Ubuntu (unlikely) or the virtualisation of Digital Ocean VPS’ is pretty costly. Whether that’s just the general overhead of a VPS, or the actual clock-speed of those virtual cores is severely limited. I’d guess at the latter?
I may provision a dedicated server with similar specs to my proposed desktop just to see what sort of performance is gained by running on bare-metal vs. cloud/VPS hardware.
UPDATE:
2 x Xeon E5-2640 provisioned from Packet
2.6Ghz 16-core Xeon - 128GB RAM
18.87 seconds
Personally, I think that lends credence to the idea that clock-speed matters far for compilation than multiple cores. Tests of course ran a fair bit quicker than the MacBook Pro though.
