Tools for website/web application load testing?

Question

Before going into production, our client demands actual numbers of how many users our web application can handle.

We have all kinds of features implemented including asset management (file uploads/downloads), documents import/export, various statistics, web-services etc.

I guess we need tool which could emulate users form submission because documents import/export as far as I noticed is the slowest part of an app because of parsing and generation.

Which tool (or set of tools) could do this?

Application details:

• XHTML/jQuery
• Coldfusion 8
• SQL Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008

Answer 1

Visual Studio Ultimate edition has great load/stress testing tools, although the ultimate edition can be a bit expensive.

Answer 2

HPs Open Source HTTPerf I like. Just setup the URLS you want to test and let it rip. use a couple of machines to emulate load. You could even parse the output into a DB and do some number crunching.

Also, think about doing HTTPerf runs with profiling on the server side to see what lags and what doesnt. A nice touch is to let a user go on the app, and record all POST/GET requests and use them as a replay set for typical user interactions.

Also, if you are thinking about UX, use firebug or something to check JS imports are being done asynchronously instead of one-at-a-time. Have a ganders at Stackoverflow question 310583/loading-javascript-dependencies-on-demand

Answer 3

• http://loadimpact.com/

• WebLoad: Professional and open source load testing from CFMeetup

Answer 4

I like jMeter - free software and does the job quite well.

Few intro screencasts:

http://www.fosscasts.com/screencasts/3-Load-Testing-with-Apache-JMeter

http://vimeo.com/10164982

Answer 5

m using Full version of JBlitz Professional 5.0 .. it's very good