Brief introduction to server performance testing tools

The server is the core of the entire network system and computing platform. Many important data are stored on the server. Many network services run on the server. Therefore, the performance of the server determines the performance of the entire application system. There are many different brands and different types of servers on the market. When you purchase, how to choose the various types of server products that are suitable for your own application, it is not enough to judge from the configuration. Can be screened by actual testing. There are many kinds of evaluation software, which software test should you choose? Here are some typical test tools: (1) Server system performance test tool The performance of a server system can be divided according to processor, memory, storage, network, and for different applications, may Some parts have higher performance requirements. Iometer (www.iometer.org): Storage Subsystem Read and Write Performance Test Iometer is software that tests the read and write performance of the storage subsystem under Windows. It can display the maximum IO capacity of the disk system, the maximum throughput of the disk system, CPU usage, error information, and so on. Users can test the read and write environment of the actual application by setting different test parameters, such as access type (such as sequential, random), read and write block size (such as 64K, 256K), and queue depth. Iometer is easy to operate and can record test scripts. It can accurately and effectively reflect the read and write performance of the storage system and is widely used by major server and storage vendors. Sisoft Sandra (www.sisoftware.co.uk): benchmark evaluation under WINDOWS The Sandra series test software released by SiSoft is the benchmark evaluation software under Windows system. The software has more than 30 test items, can view all the accessories of the system, and can score some accessories (such as CPU, memory, hard drive, etc.), and can compare with the scores of other models of hardware. . In addition, the software has additional features such as system stability comprehensive testing and performance tuning wizard. The memory bandwidth performance of Sisoft Sandra software tested on the recently released Intel bensley platform is not ideal. I don't know if there is any reference value for the FBD memory performance tested by this software. Perhaps the software should be upgraded for the FBD memory bandwidth test project. Iozone (www.iozone.org): I/O performance testing under Linux There are many server systems that use the Linux operating system. I/O performance can be tested under the Linux platform using iozone. Iozone is a file system benchmarking tool that can test the read and write performance of file systems in different operating systems. You can test the performance of hard disks in different modes, such as Read, write, re-read, re-write, read backwards, read strided, fread, fwrite, random read, pread, mmap, aio_read, aio_write. Test all of these aspects, generate an excel file, and iozone comes with a script to draw with gnuplot. The software is more convincing to test the performance of NFS on large-scale cluster systems. Netperf (www.netperf.org): Network Performance Test Netperf can test server network performance, primarily for TCP or UDP based transport. Netperf can perform network performance testing in different modes depending on the application, namely bulk data transfer mode and request/reponse mode. Netperf test results reflect how fast a system can send data to another system, and another system can receive data at multiple blocks. The Netperf tool works in client/server mode. The server is a netserver that listens for connections from the client. The client is netperf, which is used to initiate network tests to the server. Between the client and the server, first establish a control connection, pass information about the test configuration, and the results of the test; after the control connection is established and the test configuration information is passed, a test connection is established between the client and the server. A special traffic pattern is passed back and forth to test the performance of the network. For the server system, network performance is particularly important. On some servers, in order to save costs, a desktop-level network chip is used, and the performance is as good as this software. The test tools described above are all non-commercial software that can be downloaded from the Internet for free, but the test results and recognition levels are recognized by most users. You can choose different software to test according to your application needs. (II) Test tools for applications With the increase of web applications, there are more and more web-centric applications in server application solutions. Many companies' architectures are based on web applications. The focus of general web testing and previous application testing is not exactly the same. After the basic functions have been tested, important system performance tests are performed. The performance of the system is a big concept, and the coverage is very wide. For a software system, it includes execution efficiency, resource occupancy, stability, security, compatibility, reliability, etc. The following focuses on load pressure. Test of server system performance. The load and pressure of the system need to be carried out using a load test tool, and a certain number of users are tested to see if the system meets the expected design specifications. The goal of load testing is to test how the system's components, such as throughput, response time, CPU load, memory usage, etc., determine system performance, such as stability and response, as the load increases. Load testing is generally done using tools, such as LoadRunner, Webload, QALoad, etc. The main content is to write test scripts, which generally include the functions commonly used by users, and then run to get reports. Stress testing the web server using a stress test tool. Testing can help find some large problems, such as crashes, crashes, memory leaks, etc., because some programs with memory leaks may not have problems running one or two times, but if you run tens of thousands of times, More and more memory leaks can cause the system to collapse. Loadrunner: Load Testing Tools for Predicting System Behavior and Performance Currently, there are many tools in the industry that can perform performance and stress testing. Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner is one of the best, and has become the industry's norm. Currently the latest version 8.1. LoadRunner is a load testing tool that predicts system behavior and performance. By simulating tens of millions of users implementing concurrent load and real-time performance monitoring to identify and find problems, LoadRunner can test the entire enterprise architecture. LoadRunner is suitable for various systems. The architecture supports a wide range of protocols and technologies (such as Web, Ftp, Database, etc.) to predict system behavior and optimize system performance. It helps you find and discover problems faster by simulating actual user behavior and performing real-time performance monitoring. Loadrunner is a powerful and powerful stress testing tool whose scripts can be recorded and generated automatically. The test scenario is oriented towards indicators and enables multi-party monitoring. Moreover, the test results are displayed in a chart and can be freely split and combined. Through Loadrunner's test results chart comparison, you can find out the cause of the system bottleneck, generally in the order of server hardware, network, applications, operating systems, middleware.

Loadrunner is a fee-based software that costs different fees depending on the number of test items and virtual users. However, you can download the test version for free for 10 days. Webload: WEB Performance Stress Test webload is a performance testing and analysis tool from RadView that allows web application developers to automate stress testing; webload tests web performance by simulating real user actions and generating stress loads. The user creates a javascript-based test script called agenda agenda, which is used to simulate the behavior of the client. By executing the script, the performance of the web application in the real environment is measured. The current highest version is 6.0. Webload provides the cruise controller's function of cruise control. With the cruise controller, you can pre-define the performance metrics that the web application should meet, and then test whether the system meets these requirements. The cruise control can automatically load the load into the web application. A report is generated by the number of customers who can access the program under this load. Webload generates real-time reports of monitored system performance during test session execution. These results are displayed in an easy-to-read graphical interface and can be exported to excel and other files. These two softwares are powerful and can generate test reports automatically, but they are a tool after all. If you want to really locate the performance of the server and the performance bottleneck, you need to use the tools for all aspects of the test software. Have to know, such as software architecture, network topology, server hardware and other knowledge.