More Lust for Load
Charly's Column – Tsung
How many users can the database take? When does a CMS throw in the towel? In order to explore performance limits, Charly Kühnast uses the Tsung load generator instead of human users as beta testers.
If I want to test how much load a (perhaps even distributed) system can take, I launch a load generator. Some time ago, I praised Siege [1] in my column, which I still consider to be a good barrage tool. However, most load generators fire unrealistically from all barrels and do not simulate the behavior of a real user. Tsung [2] can do this better.
Tsung evolved in several evolutionary steps from a tool that ran load tests against Jabber/XMPP servers. Under the fear-inspiring name of idx-Tsunami, it was given multiprotocol capabilities. Since 2014, the development of idx-Tsunami has petered out. Tsung has simply taken the basis and continued developing Tsunami's codebase.
XMPP is still one of the services that Tsung can deploy to cause unrest on its test servers. On top of this, Tsung supports HTTP with and without TLS, WebDAV, SOAP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, AMQP, MQTT, and LDAP. All protocols are integrated via a plugin engine, so further protocols can follow at any time.
[...]
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