Stress Test tool for Password Protected Website

Question

We need to run a stress test on a password protection section of a website we host. What tool (paid or free) would be best for us to use for this?

We'd like to be able to create several 'scripts' and then have the stress test simulate X number of users. Each script will have us login as a specific user and then click on some links and submit forms to simulate an actual user.

Ideally the software would also create some nice data exports/charts.

Server is a linux web server, but we could run this on linux or Windows so software that will run on either is fine.

Answer 1

JMeter is the daddy. It's complex, and quite amazingly ugly, but highly capable. And don't let the "J" put you off - it's written in Java, but it's a generic web load testing tool.

An alternative is Grinder, which is more script-oriented, and specialises in load testing from multiple hosts at the same time.

Answer 2

Visual Studio 2008 Test Edition or Visual Studion 2010 Ultimate really works well for us. You can record tests using your browser then convert those to C# code for doing things such as using different logins, from a database for example. It is easy to set up and very powerful. If you need more than about 250 virtual users for loading you will have to buy a licence.

The charting is okay and the results can be stored in SQL Express for later analysis. It returns statitics from the target server using the windows Perfmon service, so is not completely suited fro linux web servers.

Answer 3

You can -- without much trouble -- write simple Python scripts to access your web site, providing passwords and the like. A popular package to support this kind of testing is FunkLoad.

http://funkload.nuxeo.org/

Another popular package for this kind of thing is Twill.

http://twill.idyll.org/

You can then load up some PC's with lots of copies of these scripts and turn them loose banging on your web site.

Here's a list of Python-based tools. Since Python is a very-easy-to-write programming language, you don't have any fancy test definition or configuration tools. You just use Python to write the scripts.

http://pycheesecake.org/wiki/PythonTestingToolsTaxonomy#WebTestingTools

Answer 4

We've had good luck with WAPT

Answer 5

Take a look at TestMaker by http://www.PushToTest.com . There is a free community version and a commercial grade Enterprise version. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac. There are also free webinars monthly on open source testing tools.