hi, am trying to find out how to test a site i have for client on foreign host, if it will break or go down after getting 100k+ on short time . i know how to handle 10k-20k+ but my method is limited to that range. how to get more ? can you help or show me how? thanks
Website capacity management is a tricky question ... You can artificially create the traffic with a testing tool, however, if you are unsure about how to do that it would be a good idea you didn't. Handling a high volume of traffic is more in the design rather than testing existing sites. A lot of things could go wrong testing a live site (i.e. taking down other websites, getting banned by your provider, overload DNS server, false positive from hosting caches, upset bandwidth controls and lose your site for the rest of the month, ...). This list could go on for days from some of the horror stories I've seen. Testing is different if you have a static site than if you have a dynamic site. To know for sure on a dynamic site you'll need to profile the database server too. At that volume you'll want to have access to the box AND local network. If you have several servers behind a load balancer, then you'll test differently than a site you have with a hosting provider. If you are using a hosting provider then contact them, they may be able to tell you if your plan can handle that kind of load. In some cases you'll be able to handle a short burst of 100k page impressions, but not 100k of unique visitors because of how your server does session handling. You may be allowed 100 concurrent sessions, each being able to handle 1000 requests, so pageviews won't be a problem, but unique sessions would. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing that your provider won't throttle more than 50 concurrent connections in a network device to protect their network if the burst is too short (or too sustained.) My only suggestion, if the site is making any money, then get a professional involved who can help you load test without breaking the site. I've seen some very big sites get killed (more than just crashing the server) by poorly implemented load testing. Involving a professional protects you and most will work on your team (an indepedent pro will work transpently on your team.) Either way doing it on your own you risk upsetting the customer. They will be mad if the site comes down hard during testing, or they will be mad when the site comes down under load. As for tools, Apache comes with tools that can tell you when sessions start to drop. However, using these tools from your home, a commercial site, the local network, or across the Internet will all give you different results (think latency and available bandwidth), so you need to be careful with any conclusion. If your client has a primarily static site you are better to front end it with load balancing or content delivery. You can extrapolate from current log files and system stats what things might be like for the server under greater load. However, at the 50k+ volume you have many variables to consider. Not trying to scare you, just trying to help. More information is necessary for anyone to give you the right answer on this forum. Best, Justin
thanks so much Justin , yeah i think i will look for professional help. i thought i will figure it out by my self. but thanks really.