Stress test a Server via by launching multiple processes

Question

I need to stress test a Server with around 3000 users conecting to it concurrently via SyncML Clients. For simulation of each user, a application needs to be launched which then connects to the server and does some operations. Each user corresponds to each process.

The process is unix based and does http transactions based on SyncML Protocol. I need to run the load for these 3000 processes for an hour or so.

Can you suggest best industry methods to fulfil such requirements? Can JMeter or Locust help me in this?

Regards

Answer 1

You can definitely use Locust for this.

I wouldn't recommend starting processes to generate the load (even though it's possible), mainly because you won't get detailed statistics on what requests are made, how long they take to complete, etc.

Either you could just manually do the HTTP POST requests containing the SyncML data with the built in Locust HTTP client, or you could actually take something like pysyncml, and make your own SyncML client that reports the requests it does to Locust. It's fairly simple to do, you can read more about it, and see example, on the documentation page about custom clients.

Answer 2

Yes, JMeter can do this, though it's not clear to me what exactly the unix based processes needs to do.

JMeter can natively make HTTP POST requests and send XML data. Unless you have some very custom logic to make the requests, stick to JMeter on it's own.

If you must, you CAN execute a local process, but then you're severely limiting the number of users you can simulate per machine. http://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/component_reference.html#OS_Process_Sampler