Load Testing

[WelshPixels]

Hi All

I am about to put up a community site powered by PHP and MySQL and hosted by a hosting company in the States (the site is aimed at the US).

I have never used this hosting company before and I am a bit worried that if the site becomes popular the hosting wont be up to the job.

Can anyone suggest any sort of script I can use to perform some sort of load analysis on the hosting?

Many thanks

[DotNetWebs]

Can anyone suggest any sort of script I can use to perform some sort of load analysis on the hosting?
Many thanks

You could always invite the PICSEARCH spider in: :D

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=8218 :wink:

Seriously though there are numerous tools available that will do this. A quick search for "load testing" will return dozens. They do tend to be a bit expensive but some appear to have trial versions. If it's just a one off you want a trial might suit your needs. I would also tend to do a bit of research on the hosting company. You might find out what you need from other peoples experiences or comparison sites etc..

[Rob Holmes]

Hi All

I am about to put up a community site powered by PHP and MySQL and hosted by a hosting company in the States (the site is aimed at the US).

I have never used this hosting company before and I am a bit worried that if the site becomes popular the hosting wont be up to the job.

Can anyone suggest any sort of script I can use to perform some sort of load analysis on the hosting?

Many thanks

Have you tried simple stuff like pinging their servers ?

Rob

[TWD-Tony]

It depends on what sort of testing you want to do - if you want to flood the server with requests to see how the server handles lots of visitors BE VERY CAREFULL! You may find that the server runs an intelligent firewall that will detect your "testing" as a DOS attack and block your IP address, this will then effectively bar you from your own site :(

You shouldn't need to do "testing" if you know the spec of the server and how many other site's are on the same server - if you need help finding out how many other website's are on the server with yours then let me know :wink:

If you find that if the site DOES take off and the hosting is struggling then you may need either a dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting solution anyway - no host on the planet is going to be able to host a busy community website on a standard shared hosting package...

[DotNetWebs]

TWD-Tony

You make some very good points. I didn't read the post clearly. I agree I would definitely not use any of the tools I mention on a SHARED hosting package.

Regards

Dotty