| boughtonp |
 |
NetHosted Customer
Joined: 18 Jul 2005
Posts: 130
Location: South Croydon
|
 Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: Anyone know about load testing? |
| |
I want to load test some software. Forum software to be precise.
(Specifically, I want to see how many busy Beehive  installs could fit on a single machine, and thus figure out how cost effective it might be to offer specialised Beehive hosting)
Does anyone know how I might go about doing this?
Presumably there is [free] load testing software available - how easy would it be to adapt it to simulate multiple users logging in and out, posting and reading messages, on multiple installations?
Or would I be better off looking for a spider or spam bot and adapting one of those instead?
Or does anyone have any other ideas?
_________________
Peter Boughton |
|
| Back to top |
|
| NetHosted - Andrew |
|
NetHosted Staff
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 5684
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:14 pm Post subject: |
| |
You're not planning to load test on our shared servers are you? 
I can't think of any too obvious ways to do this. It's pretty trivial to set up a shell script to retrieve pages from a site, but logging in and out wouldn't be as easy.
I think your best bet is to get into contact with people who run beehive forums of various sizes and find out their experience of what server specs they've needed to keep things running smoothly.
Andrew
_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Resellers, take a look at overselling !
| Members, tell us what you think of NetHosted! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| boughtonp |
|
NetHosted Customer
Joined: 18 Jul 2005
Posts: 130
Location: South Croydon
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject: |
| |
LOL no, going to be doing the tests on a home machine.
It was after the lead Beehive developer replied "dunno, try it and find out" that I decided to look at load testing first. 
I know several large forums that I can go ask the admins of, but I suspect they've all only got a single install each, so not sure how much that'll tell me about running 5/10/20/whatever forums on one machine.
_________________
Peter Boughton |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Mike T |
|
Community Liason
Joined: 26 Apr 2004
Posts: 453
Location: Loughborough
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:39 am Post subject: |
| |
Wouldn't running two forums with 50 active members each be roughly the same as running one forum with 100 active members? It may be different files, but it's still doing the same thing (or you could even use the same files). So maybe you could ask the laaargest forum you can find  |
|
| Back to top |
|
| rhinoian |
|
Community Liason
Joined: 25 Nov 2004
Posts: 631
Location: Manchester
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:46 pm Post subject: |
| |
| Mike T wrote: | | So maybe you could ask the laaargest forum you can find |
ADSLGuide has pretty big forums and they are usually helpful on technical enquiries of this kind.
Ian
_________________
Hard to find and premium pet products at Pennine Vets |
|
| Back to top |
|
| NetHosted - Andrew |
|
NetHosted Staff
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 5684
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject: |
| |
...but they don't run Beehive?
Andrew
_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Resellers, take a look at overselling !
| Members, tell us what you think of NetHosted! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| petethegeek |
|
NetHosted Customer
Joined: 14 Feb 2005
Posts: 192
Location: Worcester
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject: |
| |
| Mike T wrote: | | Wouldn't running two forums with 50 active members each be roughly the same as running one forum with 100 active members? |
I would be surprised were that to be the case. Running multiple instances of any software will entail process overheads, context switching, resource utilisation etc for each instantiation.
Even where the application has been developed with that in mind, which I would seriously doubt to be the case here, these can all start to add up and the overall effect tends to increase exponentially with the number of instances. It may not be so noticeable in the example quoted but if you change that to 20 forums with 5 active members, or in extremis 100 forums with 1 active member...
| boughtonp wrote: | | LOL no, going to be doing the tests on a home machine. |
I'd be very interested to hear the results. (Whether or not they confirm my conjecture.)
Regards,
Pete
_________________
"I have made this letter long, only because I lacked the time to make it short." - Blaise Pascal 1657 |
|
| Back to top |
|
| rhinoian |
|
Community Liason
Joined: 25 Nov 2004
Posts: 631
Location: Manchester
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:00 pm Post subject: |
| |
| NetHosted - Andrew wrote: | ...but they don't run Beehive?
Andrew |
Small technical point that I missed... oops. My bad.
Ian 
_________________
Hard to find and premium pet products at Pennine Vets |
|
| Back to top |
|
| NetHosted - Andrew |
|
NetHosted Staff
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 5684
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject: |
| |
| rhinoian wrote: | | NetHosted - Andrew wrote: | ...but they don't run Beehive?
Andrew |
Small technical point that I missed... oops. My bad.
Ian |
So has there been any progress on these tests boughtonp?
Andrew
_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Resellers, take a look at overselling !
| Members, tell us what you think of NetHosted! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| boughtonp |
|
NetHosted Customer
Joined: 18 Jul 2005
Posts: 130
Location: South Croydon
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:00 pm Post subject: |
| |
Mostly only progress in planning...
Setting up multiple installs of BH is relatively easy - just install one master and then copy the files, and change one line of config, and similarly with the database - use the master db as a source and just dump and import as a different DB name. So that's nice.
I'm going to be using latest stable PHP5+MySQL5+Apache2, and then decide on either CentOS or Debian. (I intended to download those today but forgot, so will have to get them tomorrow.)
At the weekend I'll be getting some usage statistics which will help me to build 'user profiles' - ie: how common reads/views/edits/searches are in relation to each other.
And I've got a page or two bookmarked relating to actual load testing software, though not followed up on that yet. Will need to decide if something like JMeter is customisable enough, or if to just produce my own.
Oh, and I've decided on a name to use if my tests are succesful and I go ahead with the hosting. But I'm not going to reveal that yet incase there's any evil people tempted to try ransoming the domain. 
_________________
Peter Boughton |
|
| Back to top |
|
| NetHosted - Andrew |
|
NetHosted Staff
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 5684
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:06 pm Post subject: |
| |
| boughtonp wrote: | | But I'm not going to reveal that yet incase there's any evil people tempted to try ransoming the domain. |
Keep us updated on the progress!
Andrew
_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Resellers, take a look at overselling !
| Members, tell us what you think of NetHosted! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Mike T |
|
Community Liason
Joined: 26 Apr 2004
Posts: 453
Location: Loughborough
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 4:20 pm Post subject: |
| |
| petethegeek wrote: | | Mike T wrote: | | Wouldn't running two forums with 50 active members each be roughly the same as running one forum with 100 active members? |
I would be surprised were that to be the case. Running multiple instances of any software will entail process overheads, context switching, resource utilisation etc for each instantiation.
Even where the application has been developed with that in mind, which I would seriously doubt to be the case here, these can all start to add up and the overall effect tends to increase exponentially with the number of instances. It may not be so noticeable in the example quoted but if you change that to 20 forums with 5 active members, or in extremis 100 forums with 1 active member...
| boughtonp wrote: | | LOL no, going to be doing the tests on a home machine. |
I'd be very interested to hear the results. (Whether or not they confirm my conjecture.)
Regards,
Pete |
Hmm, I'm not sure, this is PHP.
Regardless of whether the copy of the file is copy A or copy B, it's still exactly the same thing being executed, calling exact copies of the other files aswell.
The only difference would be in the time taken to sort through the databases (longer time with more entries), but that's negligible aswell because MySQL is fast, and also because Beehive defines 'key's or 'index'es so the vast majority of the MySQL data is ignored when sorting through anyway.
| boughtonp wrote: | | Setting up multiple installs of BH is relatively easy - just install one master and then copy the files, and change one line of config, and similarly with the database - use the master db as a source and just dump and import as a different DB name. So that's nice. |
Wouldn't it be more efficient using the same files for all 'accounts', and just changing the config file?
Mike |
|
| Back to top |
|
| boughtonp |
|
NetHosted Customer
Joined: 18 Jul 2005
Posts: 130
Location: South Croydon
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:07 pm Post subject: |
| |
| Quote: | | Wouldn't it be more efficient using the same files for all 'accounts', and just changing the config file? |
It would be pointless doing that unless I was going to host things that way, and to host things that way I'd have to modify it so that styles, emoticons, and attachments worked differently, and I'd be preventing people from having control over the files, and thus preventing them from having the option of modifying them themselves, which I don't think I want to do.
Although saying that it may well be worth investigating that option anyway, with a view to offering a two-tier option (lightweight fixed installs and full/flexible installs)
_________________
Peter Boughton |
|
| Back to top |
|
User Permissions |
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
|
| |
Client Support
