If you’re an avid reader of distributed systems news like I am, you’ve probably seen your share of benchmarks. You’ve also probably stopped taking them at face value. Unfortunately, benchmarks are hard to get right, and even more unfortunately, many articles touting benchmarks are actually benchmarketing, showcasing skewed outcomes to sell products. So why do it at all? Let’s take a look at some of the motivations of benchmarking, the common tools, and discuss a few things to keep in ...
