Does the azure compute emulator simulate the performance?

Question

Does the azure compute emulator try to simulate instance performance based on the vmsize specified in the service definition file?

Answer 1

The Azure emulator is a local (your computer) emulator of Windows Azure. It allows you to build and test logic of your application before Azure deployment.

The emulator will not reduce performance if you are testing small instance on a very powerful system. So sometimes single emulator instance can perform better in compute emulator than on Azure. However, real power of Azure comes with ability of scaling out your application (among other great features).

Answer 2

No, the Compute Emulator only simulates the control flow. It does not account for actual performance and it does not account for the specific OS version. So for example these changes (which can easily break your service) will not be visible to you until you manually tweak your OS.

The Compute Emulator is there to help you get started quickly. You should not think of it as a precise equivalent of real Azure. Therefore you should never rely on it as on a testing environment - even if you tried something on Emulator you should then test in on live Azure and your mileage may vary greatly between the two.