Performance testing an Apache download server

[rosglo]

Hello Folks,
Hope this is the right section:
Have just set up a media download server using Apache and RHEL, running on a vm provided by our central it function.
I need to run some benchmarks/performance tests to ensure it does what it needs to do, before sign off.
Most of the "load" testing tools I can find seem to based on hitting the server rather than downloading actual files.
We need to load test the underlying hardware (attached storage / connections / etc.), not just the operation of the web server.
Can anyone recommend a suitable test program?
Thanks,
Ross.

[lammert]

Hi rosglo, first of all Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

If you wan't to test the real-life performance of the server including the performance of the storage subsystem you may need to test it with the real media files you have there. Is the server already filled with all the downloadable files? Otherwise the test results may not be realistic.

The ab testing tool which is shipped with Apache does a real GET request as far as I know. The only problem is that you specify the name of the file to get on the command line which makes it impossible to specify a list of random downloadable files to properly test the random file lists.

[rosglo]

Hello Iammert,
Had a play with ab today and it definitely uses GET.
Almost does what I need but there is no control over hits/sec which is not surprising given that it is basically for establishing an upper limit for hits per second.
Thanks you for the info.
Cheers,
Ross.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, Ross!

you might find what you need with httperf:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/ [hpl.hp.com]

[rosglo]

Hello phranque,
httperf looks good.
Thanks for the pointer.
Have also been playing with jmeter which run concurrently from several computers, puts a reasonable load on the server.
Ross.