How to Stress Test a Web Server

apache-2.2stressstress-testing

Is there a tool (preferably a web service) that can stress test our site? We're having problems with our site going down once we have about 100 concurrent users. Forums seem to suggest I need to tweak my httpd.conf. I plan to try to tweak httpd.conf, but need to know if the tweaks actually did anything. So stress testing it after each configuration change might be my plan of attack. Suggestions?

Best Answer

If you're using Apache you can use a utility called ab (Apache Bench).

From the fine manual:

SUMMARY
ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current Apache installation performs. This especially shows you how many requests per second your Apache installation is capable of serving.

It's that last bit that you'll be interested in.

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