Stress testing...

[brian_31]

Hi Team:

Sometime back i posted a question for finding an alternate way(instead of using tools like load runner) to do load and stress testing. Many of them replied saying "measureware" and sar. I wanted to test a situation where i am going to have 100 users with 5 apps on a nclass box. I beleive software like load runner have recording capabilities. How do i simulate such a testing using UNIX tools or achieve the closest result? Please help.

Thanks
Brian.

[harry d brown jr]

That's a tough one. If you know the amount of disk IO each user would be doing over a period then you could do a "dd if=somefile of=somefile bs=someblocksize count=numberofblocks". You could try to simulate the users IO across the network by doing a network copy. You would need to know a lot about the application, ie: the number of threads it uses, database connections, IO calls, etc...

If you really want to test it correctly, then you need to actually use the application with a product like Neal Nelson. loadrunner, etc...

[Bernie Vande Griend]

I agree with Harry. This isn't a real easy and there isn't a perfect method. If you want results that are somewhat accurate, I see 2 choices:

1)Use software such as loadrunner, etc.

2)Use as many actual users as you can to simulate an actual load on the system. Use measureware, sar, or other recording tools to gather statistics on the server. If you gradually increase the number of users, you may be able to make an estimate of what the impact will be with 50, 75, 100 users, etc.