Benchmarking in Wilson

Overview

Microsoft.IdentityModel.Benchmarks uses a blend of BenchmarkDotNet and Crank for benchmarking and performance testing of select IdentityModel functionality. There are multiple classes that define the benchmarks that can be run.

If the project is run as a console app, BenchmarkDotNet builds and outputs this test project into a temporary working directory. Then it creates a separate process where all the benchmarking measurements are done. In IdentityModel's case, a configuration file is used to describe to Crank what work to do. Then, that job is completed on a remote machine with specific hardware, making the results more reliable and consistent.

Running tests

There are multiple ways to run the tests.

Without Crank

Non-CLI:

• Build Microsoft.Client.Test.Performance in Release mode.
• Navigate to {project directory}/bin/Release/{framework directory}/ and run the project executable.
• The results will be printed to the terminal.

Using the command line:

• cd into the project directory.
• Run dotnet run -c Release.

The BenchmarkDotNet.Artifacts folder with the exported results will be created in the directory from which the benchmark was run.

The test project can be run multiple times using the methods above and then the results aggregated manually. Another way to run the project multiple times is to add WithLaunchCount(this Job job, int count) method in Program.cs when setting up the BenchmarkDotNet job. This will specify how many times the BenchmarkDotNet will launch the benchmark process. This can help reduce the variability between the test runs.

With Crank

Please read the Crank documentation before getting started. Within the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Benchmarks project are .yml configuration files that help to connect the benchmarking apps to Crank commands, as well as test pull requests for performance changes. Because Crank runs the benchmarks on a remote machine with specific hardware, there is very little variability between test runs. Go to the Crank command-line reference and/or the Crank Pull Request Bot reference for help.

Examples:

crank --config .\identitymodel.benchmarks.yaml --scenario ValidateTokenAsyncTests --profile windows --json C:\temp\results0.json

crank --config .\identitymodel.benchmarks.yaml --scenario CreateTokenTests --profile windows --json C:\temp\results1.json

crank-pr --config prbenchmarks.identitymodel.config.yml --pull-request <link-to-PR> --benchmarks NoMvcAuth --profiles windows --components jwt --publish-results true

Testing code changes

When making code changes to code that may impact performance, make sure to run the tests to check for regressions. The Crank PR bot helps with this as it outputs a comparison table of the performance with your changes and the baseline (code without your changes). To compare results from microbenchmarks, use the following command:

crank compare <file0> <file1>

All of the tables that Crank outputs are markdown-friendly, so they can be copied directly into GitHub.

Viewing results

Sample table with summary results:

Method	IterationCount	Mean	Error	StdDev
JsonWebTokenHandler_CreateToken	Default	586,869.2 ns	3,206.71 ns	2,999.55 ns
JsonWebTokenHandler_ValidateTokenAsync	15	578.2 ns	39.37 ns	57.71 ns
JwtSecurityTokenHandler_ValidateTokenAsync	15	6,909.0 ns	82.56 ns	113.01 ns

Results are consolidated across all the iterations and launches. They are written to the console at the end of the run and also exported into .md, .csv, and .html files in BenchmarkDotNet.Artifacts folder by default. The results are grouped by the benchmark method and any parameters. The main metrics to pay attention to are mean speed and allocated memory, when applicable. Compare these values across runs, before and after code changes. The run log, which contains how many times benchmarks were executed and general debug information, is also exported into the same folder.