Multipass: Easy minimal Ubuntu VM on any OS

Normally we use LXC/LXD, KVM, QEMU, Docker, Vagrant, VirtualBox, VMWare or any other virtualization and containerization software to spawn a VM-like instance locally. Today we're gonna try multipass, a tool to spawn and orchestrate ubuntu VM. To install multipass, it's as easy as running these commands:

snap install multipass
ls -al /var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket
snap connect multipass:libvirt # if error: ensure libvirt is installed and running
snap info multipass

To spawn a VM on Ubuntu (for other OSes, see the link above), we can run:

multipass find

Image        Aliases      Version   Description
...
18.04        bionic       20220104  Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04        focal,lts    20220118  Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
21.10        impish       20220118  Ubuntu 21.10
daily:22.04  devel,jammy  20220114  Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
...
minikube                  latest    minikube is local Kubernetes

multipass launch --name groovy-lagomorph lts
# 20.04 --cpus 1 --disk 5G --mem 1G

multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Image
groovy-lagomorph        Running           10.204.28.99     Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

multipass info --all
Name:           groovy-lagomorph
State:          Running
IPv4:           10.204.28.99
Release:        Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
Image hash:     e1264d4cca6c (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS)
Load:           0.00 0.00 0.00
Disk usage:     1.3G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   134.2M out of 976.8M
Mounts:         --

To run shell inside newly spawned VM, we can run:

multipass shell groovy-lagomorph

multipass exec groovy-lagomorph -- bash

If you need to simulate ssh, according to this issue you can either:

sudo ssh -i /var/snap/multipass/common/data/multipassd/ssh-keys/id_rsa ubuntu@10.204.28.99

# or add ssh key before launch on cloud-init.yaml
ssh_authorized_keys:
  - <your_ssh_key>

# or copy ssh key manually after launch
sudo ssh-copy-id -f -o 'IdentityFile=/var/snap/multipass/common/data/multipassd/ssh-keys/id_rsa' -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ubuntu@10.204.28.99

If to stop/start/delete the VM:

multipass stop groovy-lagomorph
multipass start groovy-lagomorph
multipass delete groovy-lagomorph
multipass purge

What technology used by multipass? it's QEMU, but maybe it's different on another platform (it can run on Windows and MacOSX too).

String Associative Array and CombSort Benchmark 2021 Edition

Last year, we've done string associative benchmark and lesser string associative benchmark (measuring string concat operation and built-in associative array set and get), numeric comb sort benchmark and string comb sort benchmark (measuring basic array random access, string conversion, and array swap for number and string), this year's using newer server: 32-core running on 64-bit Ubuntu 21.10. This time we will skip programming languages that are no deb packages (unless the install script is just one line and doesn't ruin system directories) or no direct compile-run command like previous one, also only best of 3 runs.

$ alias time='/usr/bin/time -f "\nCPU: %Us\tReal: %es\tRAM: %MKB"

This time, NodeJS failed to complete (after waiting for an hour) with 10x more data compared to last year for assoc benchmark. Here's the spreadsheet and final result (Real duration and RAM):

Language	Command Flags	Version	Assoc	RAM	Num Comb	RAM	Str Comb	RAM	Total	RAM
Go	go run	go1.17.5	12.39	2,305,824	0.46	83,096	3.33	245,896	16.18	2,634,816
Java	java	18-ea+15-Ubuntu-4	10.70	5,582,308	0.96	170,240	6.93	722,152	18.59	6,474,700
Nim	nim r -d:release --gc:arc	1.4.2	17.90	4,200,212	1.21	79,444	5.45	633,816	24.56	4,913,472
Python	pypy	7.3.5	19.70	3,104,440	2.17	140,124	5.73	523,264	27.60	3,767,828
C	tcc -run	0.9.27	22.68	2,820,568	1.01	80,484	4.80	392,896	28.49	3,293,948
Julia	julia	1.6.5	23.98	3,714,448	0.52	255,844	4.60	861,076	29.10	4,831,368
V	v -prod run	0.2.4 a0a1807	20.36	8,910,856	2.67	124,248	6.48	470,136	29.51	9,505,240
Lua	luajit	2.1.0-beta3	16.70	1,133,876	3.27	133,504	10.80	511,468	30.77	1,778,848
Dart	dart	2.15.1	25.92	2,101,152	1.40	208,056	5.75	574,852	33.07	2,884,060
Crystal	crystal run --release	1.2.2	13.77	2,371,320	7.73	202,552	12.08	440,748	33.58	3,014,620
Nim	nim r -d:release	1.4.2	24.92	3,864,100	1.76	79,548	7.51	1,211,200	34.19	5,154,848
PHP	php	8.0.8	9.94	1,368,808	7.74	328,344	24.84	641,448	42.52	2,338,600
Crystal	crystal run	0.35.1	38.85	2,372,004	9.97	179,176	22.27	441,720	71.09	2,992,900
V	v run	0.2.4 a0a1807	51.81	8,911,004	6.63	79,716	18.43	470,420	76.87	9,461,140
Python	python3	3.9.7	43.11	4,106,892	29.16	405,332	43.08	722,996	115.35	5,235,220
Nim	nim r	1.4.2	88.05	3,864,048	2.93	79,536	32.60	1,211,260	123.58	5,154,844
Ruby	ruby	ruby 2.7.4p191	52.48	2,970,908	27.15	100,320	52.23	708,940	131.86	3,780,168
Javascript	node	v16.13.1	999.99	9,999,999	0.71	115,044	6.11	461,836	1006.81	10,576,879

FAQ

1. Why you measure the compile duration too? because developer experience also important (feedback loop, edit-rebuild/compile-run), at least for me, it would be sucks a lot if we have to wait a minute to compile before we can test something. We could always write precalculated values with C++ template to make runtime faster for example, but the compilation delay would be very sucks.

2. Why not warming up the VM first? each implementation have it's own advantage and disadvantage. We already know, that compiled language mostly faster at runtime, but at cost of relatively slower development feedback loop. Interpreted language mostly slower at runtime, especially if executed using VM that have startup overhead, in exception of one with AOT or JIT optimization. So to make it fair for every kind of implementation, we do it differently by not glorifying the runtime performance (which super make sense for server or long-lived process, but not best for development or CI cost which people often neglected), but by total performance which consist of Compile duration (if any) + VM startup duration (if any) + AOT or JIT duration (if any) + Runtime duration, so every strategy the PL's implementator use can be fairly judged.

3. Why there's no C++, VB.NET, C#, D, Object-Pascal? don't want to compile things (since there's no build and run command in one flag).  

4. Why there's no Kotlin, Scala, Rust, Elixir, Pony, Swift, Groovy, or Zig? Too lazy to add :3 you can contribute tho (create a pull request, then I'll run the benchmark again as preferably as there's precompiled binary/deb/apt/ppa repository for the compiler/interpreter).

5. Why there's no Ruby 3.1? I can't find any PPA for latest Ruby, latest one on Ubuntu 21.10 repo is Ruby2.7.

Contributors: ilmanzo (Nim, Crystal, D), inkydragon (Julia)

Object Storage Service with CDN

There's a lot of S3-like service, but some of them doesn't have CDN-like feature, we have to manually cache them or use CDN manually. Today we're gonna compare each service either S3 or CDN storage in terms of storage, bandwidth, and minimum price and location (SG or Tokyo if possible).

These price collected as per 2021-12-28 10:58 GMT+7

Provider Name	Location	Storage Price/GB/month	Bandwidth Price/GB	Other Price
Azure Blob	SEA	$0.195-$0.016 (hot/cold)	$0.09	Put cost $0.0296-$0.13, read also have cost
IBM Object Storage	Tokyo	$0.0237-$0.0085 (auto hot/cold)	$0.14 (50TB), $0.11 (+100TB), $0.08 (+350TB)	Put cost $0.0050 per 10K
Google Cloud Storage	SG	$0.020-$0.005 (hot/cold)/GB	$0.12 (1TB), $0.11 (9TB), $0.08	Put cost $0.05-$0.004 per 10K
AWS S3	SG	$0.025 (50TB), $0.024 (450TB), $0.023	$0.12 (10TB), $0.085 (40TB), $0.082, $0.09 to S3 other S3 region	Put cost $0.005 per 1K
Dreamhost Cloud Storage	?	$0.025, $0.0238-$0.0146 (40GB, 20TB prepaid)	$0.05
BunnyNet CDN+EdgeStorage	Asia	$0.03	$0.03
Linode Object Storage	SG	$0.02	$0.01	$5 minimum for 250GB storage/500GB transfer
Vultr Object Storage	Not stated, SG available	$0.02	$0.01	$5 minimum for 250GB storage/1TB transfer
DigitalOcean Spaces	SG	$0.02	$0.01	$5 minimum for 250GB storage/1TB transfer
5Cents CDN/Akamai	WorldWide	$0.05, $0.0143 (alacarte, pay-as-you-go)	$0.0075-$0.015 (akamai)	$7.5 minimum for 1TB for alacarte
PushR CDN+SFS	US, EU, Asia	$0.015	$0.01-$0.04 (depends on network zone)
Backblaze B2	Only US or NL	$0.005	$0.01, free if through CDN partner	Put cost $0.004 per 10K, 2500 free per day
Contabo	EU only	$0.00996 (promo)	free	$2.49 minimum for 250GB storage
Filebase	?	$0.0059	$0.0059	$5.99 minimum for 1TB storage/1TB transfer
Wasabi	APAC	$0.0068	free*	$6.99 minimum for 1TB storage (=max egress)
StorJ	?	$0.004 ($4/TB after 150GB)	$0.007 ($7/TB after 150GB)

What if you need to transfer between S3-compatible provider? try https://packetfabric.com/transporter