[NBLUG/talk] Stress Testing servers

[Steve]

Cool idea =) I'll give it some thought =)

-Steve



On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 10:09:01AM -0800, Kyle Rankin wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 09:55:24AM -0800, Steve wrote:
> > 
> > I just installed a new mail server for the company I work for.  It's not
> > live yet =) But I want to stress test it big time for a couple days before
> > it goes live.
> > 
> > Anyone know of a way to stress test a server?  In this case I want to test
> > the mail server (Sendmail) and make sure the box wont fall over under load.
> > 
> > Any ideas are greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > -Steve
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > ----
> >       "Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment."
> >                                                    -- Lao-Tzu
> 
> Others probably have more experience with this, and hopefully will chime
> in (with hopefully more professional methods).  
> 
> To my knowledge one of the main things that stresses a mailserver isn't as
> much delivery as retrieval.  I would probably set up a three-machine
> network, including the server.  
> 
> The first machine I would write a simple mail script to email an email to
> each user every X period, with the period depending really upon how many
> users you have, and how much traffic you expect.  The emails should
> probably have some sort of number in the subject line so it's easy to track
> and make sure that all the messages got there, and in what sequence. To
> stress test it I'd probably try to give it about 3x the average traffic (or
> if you know the typical max traffic, then 1.5 or double it) it will see.  
> 
> Then I would have a second machine set up to use pop or imap to check for
> and retrieve new messages for every account every minute (you can do this
> with a fetchmail script).  Whether fetchmail deletes the messages upon
> retrieval is up to you.  You might want to test both.  A benefit of
> deleting the messages is that you can run the test longer without having
> to worry about filling up the hard drive.
> 
> I'd run this for a day or two (or shorter depending on how much space your
> hard drive can take) if possible.
> 
> At the least, you will know your machine can handle maximum utilization.
> Or you will be able to tweak and figure out at what point does the machine
> become overloaded, so you can make sure that your usage never reaches that
> point.
> 
> -- 
> Kyle Rankin
> NBLUG President
> The North Bay Linux Users Group
> http://nblug.org
> IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
> kyle at nblug.org
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-- 
----
      "Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment."
                                                   -- Lao-Tzu