web server performance measurement tools

Measuring Web Server Performance:

Web performance benchmarking tool httperf. Httperf sends requests to the web server at a specified rate and gathers stats. Increase till one finds the saturation point.

Installation:

• Debian: apt-get install httperf

Example useage:

• Print performance stats for home page of yourdomain.com: httperf --hog --server www.yourdomain.com
• Create 100 connections at a rate of 10/sec: httperf --hog --server http://www.yourdomain.com/ --num-conn 100 --rate 10 --timeout 5
• Generate 10 sessions at a rate of i seesion/sec every 2 seconds: httperf --hog --ser=www --wsess=10,5,2 --rate 1 --timeout 5

httperf command line options:

Command	Command Description
--hog	Use as many TCP ports as necessary to generate stats (else limited to port 1024-5000)
--num-calls	Session oriented workloads.
--max-connections=#	Limit the number of connections to that specified.
--num-calls=#	Specify the number of calls to issue on each connection before closing it.
--server host-name	Default localhost. Specify IP address of host name.
--wsess=N1,N2,X	Specify session where N1: number of sessions N2: number of calls per session X: delay between calls (sec)
--timeout	Stop if there is no response within timeout period.

Links:

• httperf home page - downloads, documentation
• Man page

Other web performance measurement tools:

• autobench: Perl wrapper to httperf which itterates and gathers data for each run. Creates csv file for use in a spreadsheet to generate graphs.
• openload: Simulates number of concurrent users. Measures completed requests/sec.
• Apache JMeter: Java app for static and dynamic performance analysis.