Stress/load testing a website

[filtuh.com]

After some advice - we're going with a scalable cloud solution for a site which is fairly heavy on the ajax - running asp.net on an ms-sql database.

We want to know at what user number of concurrent users various server specifications start to break to estimate peak load. Open to suggestions on other metrics as well.

The solution is scalable - we can fairly easily mirror onto another server with a load balancer inbetween, but it would be useful to know at what point could we expect to see different specs creaking.

We can give typical user experiences which could be mapped, randomized then bulk generated, and I've seen several sites which appear to offer this service. Any recommendations or tips?

Thanks

[RedEvo]

You could try these guys (http://www.scivisum.co.uk/index.php).

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[ZMakarov]

After some advice - we're going with a scalable cloud solution for a site which is fairly heavy on the ajax - running asp.net on an ms-sql database.

We want to know at what user number of concurrent users various server specifications start to break to estimate peak load. Open to suggestions on other metrics as well.

The solution is scalable - we can fairly easily mirror onto another server with a load balancer inbetween, but it would be useful to know at what point could we expect to see different specs creaking.

We can give typical user experiences which could be mapped, randomized then bulk generated, and I've seen several sites which appear to offer this service. Any recommendations or tips?

Thanks

Hi,

If your website has passed the usability and acceptance tests, then the next depends on the server it is going to be hosted on. Try in increments of 100. Concurrent 100 user accounts creation, concurrent 100 users downloading from the site/using the sites services.
Increase the amount "100" by 100 and see what happens when load is increased, Can it take the stress? :rolleyes:

[marlint]

Have you looked at using something like jMeter? I've used it for load/scalability testing and it performed very well, can also run distributed tests so you can generate load from a few different PCs. Best of all its free.

Needless to say- you need to be wary of hitting other non-server bottlenecks (e.g. your broadband bandwidth).