Deploy Apache Flink on Google Cloud C4A (Arm-based Axion VMs)

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/_index.md

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+---
+title: Deploy Apache Flink on Google Cloud C4A (Arm-based Axion VMs)
+
+minutes_to_complete: 30
+
+who_is_this_for: This learning path is intended for software developers deploying and optimizing Apache Flink workloads on Linux/Arm64 environments, specifically using Google Cloud C4A virtual machines powered by Axion processors.
+
+learning_objectives:
+  - Provision an Arm-based SUSE SLES virtual machine on Google Cloud (C4A with Axion processors)
+  - Install Apache Flink on a SUSE Arm64 (C4A) instance
+  - Validate Flink functionality by starting the Flink cluster and running a simple baseline job (e.g., WordCount) on the Arm64 VM
+  - Benchmark Flink performance using internal JMH-based micro-benchmarks on Arm64 (Aarch64) architecture
+
+prerequisites:
+  - A [Google Cloud Platform (GCP)](https://cloud.google.com/free) account with billing enabled
+  - Basic familiarity with [Apache Flink](https://flink.apache.org/) and its runtime environment
+
+author: Pareena Verma
+
+##### Tags
+skilllevels: Introductory
+subjects: Databases
+cloud_service_providers: Google Cloud
+
+armips:
+  - Neoverse
+
+tools_software_languages:
+  - Flink
+  - Java
+  - Maven
+
+operatingsystems:
+  - Linux
+
+# ================================================================================
+#       FIXED, DO NOT MODIFY
+# ================================================================================
+further_reading:
+  - resource:
+      title: Google Cloud documentation
+      link: https://cloud.google.com/docs
+      type: documentation
+
+  - resource:
+      title: Flink documentation
+      link:  https://nightlies.apache.org/flink/flink-docs-lts/
+      type: documentation
+
+  - resource:
+      title: Flink Performance Tool
+      link: https://github.com/apache/flink-benchmarks/tree/master?tab=readme-ov-file#flink-benchmarks
+      type: documentation
+
+weight: 1
+layout: "learningpathall"
+learning_path_main_page: "yes"
+---

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/_next-steps.md

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+---
+# ================================================================================
+#       FIXED, DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE
+# ================================================================================
+weight: 21                  # Set to always be larger than the content in this path to be at the end of the navigation.
+title: "Next Steps"         # Always the same, html page title.
+layout: "learningpathall"   # All files under learning paths have this same wrapper for Hugo processing.
+---

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/background.md

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+---
+title: Getting started with Apache Flink on Google Axion C4A (Arm Neoverse-V2)
+
+weight: 2
+
+layout: "learningpathall"
+---
+
+## Google Axion C4A Arm instances in Google Cloud
+
+Google Axion C4A is a family of Arm-based virtual machines built on Google’s custom Axion CPU, which is based on Arm Neoverse-V2 cores. Designed for high-performance and energy-efficient computing, these virtual machines offer strong performance for modern cloud workloads such as CI/CD pipelines, microservices, media processing, and general-purpose applications.
+
+The C4A series provides a cost-effective alternative to x86 virtual machines while leveraging the scalability and performance benefits of the Arm architecture in Google Cloud.
+
+To learn more about Google Axion, refer to the [Introducing Google Axion Processors, our new Arm-based CPUs](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/introducing-googles-new-arm-based-cpu) blog.
+
+## Apache Flink
+
+[Apache Flink](https://flink.apache.org/) is an open-source, distributed **stream and batch data processing framework** developed under the [Apache Software Foundation](https://www.apache.org/).
+
+Flink is designed for **high-performance, low-latency, and stateful computations** on both unbounded (streaming) and bounded (batch) data. It provides a robust runtime and APIs in **Java**, **Scala**, and **Python** for building scalable, fault-tolerant data processing pipelines.
+
+Flink is widely used for **real-time analytics**, **event-driven applications**, **data pipelines**, and **machine learning workloads**. It integrates seamlessly with popular systems such as **Apache Kafka**, **Hadoop**, and various **cloud storage services**.
+
+To learn more, visit the [Apache Flink official website](https://flink.apache.org/) and explore the [documentation](https://nightlies.apache.org/flink/flink-docs-release-2.1/).

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/baseline.md

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+---
+title: Apache Flink Baseline Testing on Google Axion C4A Arm Virtual Machine
+weight: 5
+
+### FIXED, DO NOT MODIFY
+layout: learningpathall
+---
+
+## Apache Flink Baseline Testing on GCP SUSE VM
+This guide explains how to perform **baseline testing** for Apache Flink after installation on a **GCP SUSE VM**. Baseline testing ensures that the Flink cluster is operational, the environment is correctly configured, and basic jobs run successfully.
+
+### Download and Extract Maven
+Before running Flink jobs, ensure that **Java** and **Maven** are installed on your VM.  
+Download Maven and extract it:
+
+```console
+cd /opt
+sudo wget https://archive.apache.org/dist/maven/maven-3/3.8.6/binaries/apache-maven-3.8.6-bin.tar.gz
+sudo tar -xvzf apache-maven-3.8.6-bin.tar.gz
+sudo mv apache-maven-3.8.6 /opt/maven
+```
+
+### Set Environment Variables
+Configure the environment so Maven commands are recognized system-wide:
+
+```console
+echo "export M2_HOME=/opt/maven" >> ~/.bashrc
+echo "export PATH=\$M2_HOME/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
+source ~/.bashrc
+```
+Verify the Maven installation:
+
+```console
+mvn -version
+```
+At this point, both Java and Maven are installed and ready to use.
+
+### Start the Flink Cluster
+Before proceeding to start the Flink cluster, you need to allow port 8081 from your GCP console.
+
+Start the Flink cluster using the provided startup script:
+
+```console
+cd $FLINK_HOME
+./bin/start-cluster.sh
+```
+
+You should see output similar to:
+```output
+Starting cluster.
+[INFO] 1 instance(s) of standalonesession are already running on lpprojectsusearm64.
+Starting standalonesession daemon on host lpprojectsusearm64.
+Starting taskexecutor daemon on host lpprojectsusearm64.
+```
+
+Verify that the JobManager and TaskManager processes are running:
+
+```console
+jps
+```
+
+You should see output similar to:
+```output
+21723 StandaloneSessionClusterEntrypoint
+2621 Jps
+2559 TaskManagerRunner
+```
+
+### Access the Flink Web UI
+
+Open the Flink Web UI in a browser:
+
+```console
+http://<VM_IP>:8081
+```
+
+- A successfully loaded dashboard confirms the cluster network and UI functionality.
+-This serves as the baseline for network and UI validation.
+
+![Flink Dashboard alt-text#center](images/flink-dashboard.png "Figure 1: Flink Dashboard")
+
+### Run a Simple Example Job
+Execute a sample streaming job to verify that Flink can run tasks correctly:
+
+```console
+cd $FLINK_HOME
+./bin/flink run examples/streaming/WordCount.jar
+```
+
+- Monitor the job in the Web UI or check console logs.
+- Confirm that the job completes successfully.
+
+![Flink Dashboard alt-text#center](images/wordcount.png "Figure 2: Word Count Job")
+
+Flink baseline testing has been completed. You can now proceed to Flink benchmarking.

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/benchmarking.md

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+---
+title: Apache Flink Benchmarking
+weight: 6
+
+### FIXED, DO NOT MODIFY
+layout: learningpathall
+---
+
+
+## Apache Flink Benchmarking
+This guide provides step-by-step instructions to set up and run **Apache Flink Benchmarks** on a **GCP SUSE VMs**. It covers cloning the repository, building the benchmarks, exploring the JAR, and listing available benchmarks.
+
+### Clone the Repository
+Start by cloning the official Flink benchmarks repository. This repository contains all the benchmark definitions and example jobs.
+
+```console
+cd ~
+git clone https://github.com/apache/flink-benchmarks.git
+cd flink-benchmarks
+```
+
+### Build the Benchmarks with Maven
+Use Maven to compile the benchmarks and generate the benchmark JAR. Skip tests to save time.
+
+```console
+mvn clean package -DskipTests
+```
+- **mvn clean package** → Cleans previous builds and packages the project.
+
+After this step, the target directory will contain the compiled **benchmarks.jar**.
+
+### Explore the JAR Contents
+Verify the generated files inside the `target` directory:
+
+```console
+cd target
+ls
+```
+You should see an output similar to:
+
+```output
+benchmark-0.1.jar  classes            generated-test-sources  maven-status         protoc-plugins
+benchmarks.jar     generated-sources  maven-archiver          protoc-dependencies  test-classes
+```
+- **benchmarks.jar**→ The main benchmark JAR file used to run Flink benchmarks.
+
+### List Available Benchmarks
+To view all the benchmarks included in the JAR:
+
+```console
+java -jar benchmarks.jar -l
+```
+- `-l` → Lists all benchmarks packaged in the JAR.
+- This helps you identify which benchmarks you want to execute on your VM.
+
+### Run Selected Benchmarks
+While the Flink benchmarking project includes multiple suites for state backends, windowing, checkpointing, and scheduler performance, this Learning path focuses on the Remote Channel Throughput benchmark to evaluate network and I/O performance.
+
+**Remote Channel Throughput**: Measures the data transfer rate between remote channels in Flink, helping to evaluate network and I/O performance.
+```console
+java -jar benchmarks.jar org.apache.flink.benchmark.RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance
+```
+You should see an output similar to:
+```output
+
+Result "org.apache.flink.benchmark.RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance":
+  10536.511 ±(99.9%) 60.121 ops/ms [Average]
+  (min, avg, max) = (10289.593, 10536.511, 10687.736), stdev = 89.987
+  CI (99.9%): [10476.390, 10596.633] (assumes normal distribution)
+
+# Run complete. Total time: 00:25:14
+Benchmark                                          (mode)   Mode  Cnt      Score     Error   Units
+RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance  ALIGNED  thrpt   30  17445.341 ± 153.256  ops/ms
+RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance  DEBLOAT  thrpt   30  10536.511 ±  60.121  ops/ms
+```
+
+### Flink Benchmark Metrics Explained  
+
+- **Run Count**: Total benchmark iterations executed, higher count improves reliability.  
+- **Average Throughput**: Mean operations per second across all iterations.  
+- **Standard Deviation**: Variation from average throughput, smaller means more consistent.  
+- **Confidence Interval (99.9%)**: Range where the true average throughput lies with 99.9% certainty.  
+- **Min Throughput**: The lowest throughput was observed, and it shows worst-case performance.  
+- **Max Throughput**: Highest throughput observed, shows best-case performance.
+
+### Benchmark summary on x86_64
+To compare the benchmark results, the following results were collected by running the same benchmark on a `x86 - c4-standard-4` (4 vCPUs, 15 GB Memory) x86_64 VM in GCP, running SUSE:
+
+| Benchmark                                          | Mode     | Count | Score (ops/ms) | Error (±) | Min        | Max        | Stdev    | CI (99.9%)             | Units  |
+|---------------------------------------------------|---------|-------|----------------|-----------|------------|------------|---------|------------------------|--------|
+| RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance | ALIGNED | 30    | 24873.046      | 892.673   | 11195.028  | 12425.761  | 421.057 | [11448.649, 12011.275] | ops/ms |
+| RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance | DEBLOAT | 30    | 11729.962      | 281.313   | 11195.028  | 12425.761  | 421.057 | [11448.649, 12011.275] | ops/ms |
+
+### Benchmark summary on Arm64
+Results from the earlier run on the `c4a-standard-4` (4 vCPU, 16 GB memory) Arm64 VM in GCP (SUSE):
+
+| Benchmark                                          | Mode     | Count | Score (ops/ms) | Error (±) | Min       | Max       | Stdev   | CI (99.9%)             | Units  |
+|---------------------------------------------------|---------|-------|----------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|---------|------------------------|--------|
+| RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance | ALIGNED | 30    | 17445.341      | 153.256   | 10289.593 | 10687.736 | 89.987  | [10476.390, 10596.633] | ops/ms |
+| RemoteChannelThroughputBenchmark.remoteRebalance | DEBLOAT | 30    | 10536.511      | 60.121    | 10289.593 | 10687.736 | 89.987  | [10476.390, 10596.633] | ops/ms |
+
+### Apache Flink performance benchmarking comparison on Arm64 and x86_64
+
+- The **ALIGNED mode** achieved an average throughput of **17,445 ops/ms**, demonstrating higher performance on the Arm64 VM.  
+- The **DEBLOAT mode** achieved an average throughput of **10,537 ops/ms**, slightly lower due to optimization differences.  
+- The benchmark confirms that the **Arm64 architecture** efficiently handles Flink's remote channel throughput workloads.  
+- Overall, the average throughput across both modes is approximately **14,854 ops/ms**, indicating strong baseline performance for Arm64 deployments.

content/learning-paths/servers-and-cloud-computing/flink-on-gcp/installation.md

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+---
+title: Install Apache Flink
+weight: 4
+
+### FIXED, DO NOT MODIFY
+layout: learningpathall
+---
+
+## Install Apache Flink on GCP VM
+This guide walks you through installing **Apache Flink** and its required dependencies on a **Google Cloud Platform (GCP) SUSE Arm64 Virtual Machine (VM)**. By the end of this section, you will have a fully configured Flink environment ready for job execution and benchmarking.
+
+###  Update the System and Install Java
+Before installing Flink, ensure your system packages are up to date and Java is installed.
+
+```console
+sudo zypper refresh
+sudo zypper update -y
+sudo zypper install -y java-17-openjdk java-17-openjdk-devel
+```
+This step ensures you have the latest system updates and the Java runtime needed to execute Flink applications.
+
+### Download Apache Flink Binary
+Next, download the pre-built binary package for **Apache Flink** from the official Apache mirror.
+
+```console
+cd /opt
+sudo wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/flink/flink-2.1.0/flink-2.1.0-bin-scala_2.12.tgz
+```
+This command retrieves the official Flink binary distribution for installation on your VM.
+
+{{% notice Note %}}
+Flink 2.0.0 introduced Disaggregated State Management architecture, which enables more efficient resource utilization in cloud-native environments, ensuring high-performance real-time processing while minimizing resource overhead.
+You can view [this release note](https://flink.apache.org/2025/03/24/apache-flink-2.0.0-a-new-era-of-real-time-data-processing/)
+
+The [Arm Ecosystem Dashboard](https://developer.arm.com/ecosystem-dashboard/) recommends Flink version 2.0.0, the minimum recommended on the Arm platforms.
+{{% /notice %}}
+
+### Extract the Downloaded Archive
+Extract the downloaded `.tgz` archive to make the Flink files accessible for configuration.
+
+```console
+sudo tar -xvzf flink-2.1.0-bin-scala_2.12.tgz
+```
+After extraction, you will have a directory named `flink-2.1.0` under `/opt`.
+
+**Rename the extracted directory for convenience:**
+For easier access and management, rename the extracted Flink directory to a simple name like `/opt/flink`.
+
+```console
+sudo mv flink-2.1.0 /opt/flink
+```
+This makes future references to your Flink installation path simpler and more consistent.
+
+### Configure Environment Variables
+Set the environment variables so the Flink commands are recognized system-wide. This ensures you can run `flink` from any terminal session.
+
+```console
+echo "export FLINK_HOME=/opt/flink" >> ~/.bashrc
+echo "export PATH=\$FLINK_HOME/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
+```
+
+Additionally, create a dedicated log directory for Flink and assign proper permissions:
+```console
+sudo mkdir -p /opt/flink/log
+sudo chown -R $(whoami):$(id -gn) /opt/flink/log
+sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/flink/log
+```
+
+**Apply the changes:**
+
+```console
+source ~/.bashrc
+```
+
+### Verify the Installation
+To confirm that Flink has been installed correctly, check its version:
+
+```console
+flink -v
+```
+
+You should see an output similar to:
+
+```output
+Version: 2.1.0, Commit ID: 4cb6bd3
+```
+This confirms that Apache Flink has been installed and is ready for use.