load testing using ruby

[swapnali]

Hi

I want to simualte 300 users for an application.
Can someone tell me how many users can be simulated using ruby ?

Thanks,
Swapnali

 

[hemant]

Hi

I want to simualte 300 users for an application.
Can someone tell me how many users can be simulated using ruby ?

Can you be more specific? Uses of what?

 

[Kyle Schmitt]

If this is a webapp (and from your 300 user request I'm guessing it
is), ruby is not currently be the right way to test. The load/stress
testing components available for Ruby are less than complete.

Take a look at Jmeter (http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/). It will
probably do what you want it to do, and most likely will only take you
between one afternoon to two days to complete a good suite of tests.

Don't give into the temptation to try and use Watir or some other
functional testing system for load/stress testing. They aren't
designed for it; getting them to work in this situation will be an
exercise in futility; any results will be dubious at best. I'm
working as a test developer, and Jmeter is my tool of choice for
load/stress testing of web applications.

As with any testing, a little common sense will go a long way, and
using common sense won't be completely natural on the first attempt
I know this from experience.

Give a holler here, or on the jmeter-mailing list if you need help.
They are very responsive and helpful (just like the ruby list!)

--Kyle

 

[Rob Sanheim]

If this is a webapp (and from your 300 user request I'm guessing it
is), ruby is not currently be the right way to test. The load/stress
testing components available for Ruby are less than complete.

Take a look at Jmeter (http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/). It will
probably do what you want it to do, and most likely will only take you
between one afternoon to two days to complete a good suite of tests.

Don't give into the temptation to try and use Watir or some other
functional testing system for load/stress testing. They aren't
designed for it; getting them to work in this situation will be an
exercise in futility; any results will be dubious at best. I'm
working as a test developer, and Jmeter is my tool of choice for
load/stress testing of web applications.

As with any testing, a little common sense will go a long way, and
using common sense won't be completely natural on the first attempt
I know this from experience.

Give a holler here, or on the jmeter-mailing list if you need help.
They are very responsive and helpful (just like the ruby list!)

I would recommend starting with httperf, personally. Its a nice,
simple command line tool that, according to many, is one of the few
load testing tools to provide accurate and useful stats. Zed
recommends it for testing mongrel, for instance. I haven't use JMeter
personally, but I think ab or httperf would be the best thing to try
first, before getting more complicated.

You could very easily script httperf it with ruby, and there is also
autobench which is a perl wrapper around httperf.

See also:
* http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/
* http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2005/04/http-performance-testing-with-httperf.html

- Rob