I would like to know if there is any open source load generator for stress testing. I am using JMeter script to run the test. I know there is one called flood.io but think it is not free. Can you please recommend me some option and documentation on how to use it properly? Thanks!!
Well, JMeter is open source, you can observe source repositories so it matches your needs.
The point is where to run JMeter so you need to have your own bare metal machines (or normal desktop/laptop/virtual machine). If you're looking for an open-source operating system there is a wide range of free and open source Linux distributions, FreeBSD, illumos, etc.
If you don't have any machines and any money to invest into these machines there are some free cloud options like AWS Free Tier or Oracle Cloud Free Tier, also some SaaS service providers offer free pricing plans, for example BlazeMeter gives you 50 virtual users, LoadFocus gives you 20 concurrent users, etc.
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I was looking for a uniform configuration management tool for remote installation of OS on remote servers(similar to puppet/chef) having wide range of platform support. I think we can use PXE/kickstart for remote installation. I am not sure that can be used to install OS on multiple servers in parallel? Other way to spin up the EC2 instance from AWS and pay amazon for the usage. I was wondering is there any other best option for this requirement?
Regards
Bubunia
You can consider ansible as a strong candidate for this.
Some of its features:
Open source with large development community
Number of modules which can help you building flexible solutions.
Cloud focused development modules
Ansible inventory which can help you automate things end to end on the basis of tags to your instances
Agent less
Easy to write, read and understand yaml format
Pre-builded modules for multiple installations available in open source community
Work with multiple OS
It is efficient as well I am using it from last 1 year and found it very good.
Sparrow6 cm supports quite a range of platforms/os. You can choose Sparrowdo to run configuration jobs in push manner over ssh.
Currently I use jmeter aggregate report or summary report for submitting reports. But they expect something extra.. How can I give. Is there any plugins for getting server resources usage when testing load.
Reporting: since JMeter 3.0 there is a HTML Reporting Dashboard which can be generated during the test run. It contains exhaustive overview information. If you need to find out the reason of the bottleneck or memory leak or whatever you can consider extra Graphs available via JMeter Plugins project.
The same JMeter Plugins project provides PerfMon - client-server application which is able to collect over 70 different metrics and plot them via JMeter Listener. See How to Monitor Your Server Health & Performance During a JMeter Load Test guide for detailed setup and usage instructions.
There are quite a few plug-ins available that can help you analyze the results better. You can refer to https://jmeter-plugins.org/ for the same.
Most popularly used ones are:
Response Times Over Time
Response Times Percentiles
Transactions per Second
Response Latencies Over Time
In case of server usage you can use following that comes with JMeter plug-ins
PerfMon Metrics Collector and Server Agent or
In case of Unix based system use sar command that comes with sysstat package or VMstat. In case of windows based system use Perfmon to capture the system utilization data while the test is running and then use Ksar to plot graphs with the data collected using sar. https://sourceforge.net/projects/ksar/
If you have collected data using Perfmon then plot the graphs using PAL. https://pal.codeplex.com/
In this case, I would suggest using Grafana. It shows realtime results. And the best thing is, it can be configured according to the need.
Now, the thing is how to use it? Using it is not that tough.
If you're using a Mac or Linux (Any Flavour) things become easy. If you're using Windows, I would suggest using a virtual machine. The reason behind that is windows block traffic after some requests. And that causes a lot of pain in the head.
In my case, I used a virtual machine to setup ubuntu inside it and then configured Grafana.
For working with Grafana, you need to have these two things installed.
Grafana Itself
Influx Db for the backend
Links for both here below:
https://grafana.com/grafana/download?platform=linux
https://portal.influxdata.com/downloads/
Once installed and setup,
You need to use Backen Listener to push results o Graphite Client (Installed along with Influx DB Automatically).
I know it is a bit confusing but once you understand the thing, you and your client will love the detailed reports.
Remeber, Grafana is all about configuration.
Let me know if you have any confusion regarf=ding this.
Happy to help. :)
Azure and EC2 are optimized for running servers. Lots and lots of servers. Both platforms attempt to manage tons of things for you -- in Azure's case, it wants to manage even the target operating system.
However, I'd like to use such a service for a different reason: Testing.
I've got a ton of operating systems I need to support. My tests don't actually take that long, but running them on every platform is time consuming. I was going to just use a cloud service for this, thinking that these machines would be running for much less than an hour, and it wouldn't cost all that much.
The problem is that the major cloud services won't run client versions of Windows -- Windows Server only.
Is there a cloud service which would let me run every client and server version, and every service pack level, of Windows released starting with Windows 2000 SP4 to the present day?
Try CloudSigma, Defiantly can upload your own ISO's and run any x86 and 64bit OS you like on it. They have their in-house versions to get started but you can bring your own OS versions.
Based in Switzerland but they would have also the servers in the US, performance i've expected to quite good.
https://www.cloudsigma.com/
There is also a free trail on at the moment
https://cs.cloudsigma.com/accounts/signup/
The list of Open Virtualization Alliance members may have some candidates for you.
A search on the page for "operating system" suggests the following possibilities (in addition to the already-mentioned CloudSigma):
ElasticHosts
stepping stone GmbH (I'm less sure about this one)
Sublime IP
No, commercial cloud services like Azure and Amazon EC2 are themselves virtual, so you don't get a great deal of control over the operating system.
An option may be to consider renting a full physical server (colocated, or managed) and then use a battery of virtual machines to run the tests. Something like VMWare's snapshot feature sounds perfect: spin up a clean virtual machine, deploy the test code, then throw away changes to the disk once the tests have been completed.
Or, indeed, as #Stuart suggests - run the tests locally.
This definitely isn't something Azure offers - I think all of Azure's images are based near to Windows Server 2008 R2.
For EC2 you could set up images for Server 2003 through to 2008R2 - but nothing else. There are also some services out there to assist with this - e.g. VaasNet http://www.vaasnet.com/catalog
For testing the other Windows operating systems, I simply don't think there's a cloud service available to let you do this. I don't even think there are any cloud services where you can run "Virtual PC" type applications on top of the hosted operating system - as I think most of the virtualization APIs are disabled in the cloud environments (virtualization within virtualization not supported!)
Sorry to say this, but your best bet may be local test hardware running VirtualPC images.
It appears that the Xen Cloud Platform might do what you're after. This page ends with:
Guest Operating Systems: the XCP binary distribution is delivered with a wide range of Linux and Widnows guests. Check out the release notes for a complete list.
And their PDF document Xen Cloud Platform Virtual Machine Installation Guide (Release 0.1, Published October 2009) says that Windows 2000 Server has "No known issues."
(I don't have any affiliation with Xen)
In conjunction with the above, there is also a list of Xen VirtualPrivateServerProviders, several of which say they include Windows.
Buy time on an EC2 instance and use it to host VirtualBox VMs with VMs set up for each operating system you want to test for. Use a RDP client or VNC or some other means to control the guest OS. This forum post seems to point to that being possible. But yes it is not a cloud service itself and you would have todo some initial setup and configuration work yourself.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on AWS and assign user accounts to developers that should have access to most (but not all) features.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the
idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent build from the server for development
on his local box. Basically, something like SVN. Is this possible?
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server? Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j - will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Thanks for your time.
To answer your questions:
Yes, kind of. There is Identity and Access Management offered by AWS, but it's not the easiest solution to use. Having said that, it can allow you to lock down some of the access activities on an account so that you have some control over your users. I would say that AWS is still very much a single-user environment for server administrators.
You could get away using only the management console. Your use of scripting may only be required if you want to run batch or periodic activities (eg. take a snapshot of all machines at 2am every night).
Costs for EC2 are low, especially for the Micro machine sizes. But keep in mind that the idea of cloud computing is the availability of on-demand resources for short term use. If you run dev machines needlessly over night then you will still be paying! And if someone launches an Extra Large machine (or 30 machine instances) then you will suddenly find yourself with bigger bills than expected.
(5. and 6. as well) Amazon EC2 is really about issuing you the boxes. What you do thereafter is fully up to you. You can create snapshots daily of your machines, you can deploy SVN and noSQL etc. etc.
I've been seriously into EC2 for a while now, and lots of companies are starting to look at the idea you propose. There are benefits to giving staff on-demand compute power, without having to manage any infrastructure in-house. But I will re-iterate my first point that EC2 is very much a single-user, server administration environment, which doesn't lend itself to being used as a dev playground without additional tools. (Or at least it becomes a challenging task if you have several devs spread around in your company).
I own a business that helps companies use EC2 for dev/lab/playground type of environments. I won't directly flog it here, but will show a quick demo we just put on DropBox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16347737/RequestEC2Machines.html Feel free to request a machine to see how adding process to EC2 can help meet your goals.
I run/develop a website using Amazon EC2 & SimpleDB and I have some comments for you on your questions
Hi.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on
AWS and assign user accounts to
developers that should have access to
most (but not all) features.
In my experience, there doesn't seem to be a direct correspondence between Amazon users and users on a single instance. An instance's root account is connected to the amazon account indirectly through a key pair. Although, I must say that I haven't explored this question in detail.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the > idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
I manage everything through their web console and Eclipse IDE plugins. I've never had to touch the API yet for development and deployment.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in
development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am
I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
Micro instances cost the lowest and the cost is pretty good if you're just starting an instance for a couple of hours and then stopping it. I never think twice about starting a micro instance to try out something new
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers
scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent
build from the server for development on his local box. Basically, something like SVN.
Is this possible?
I haven't seen this feature being offered directly by Amazon. You can of course keep an instance always on for your repository with backups
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server?
Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
EC Pricing - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Amazon Simple Monthly Calculator - http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j -
will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Amazon instances can be what you want them to be, hence you can either use a pre-configured ami to launch an instance or start off with a bare bones Ubuntu Server or Windows Server e.g. and build a system with what you want. You can then save the snapshot of that system to launch more in the future or to re-launch if your instance crashes
What tools or strategies are you using for automation of EC2 activities?
I need to be able to bring up a number of EC2 instances, provision various software to it (primarily Python packages), interact with S3 (primarily download data), and run various jobs. I'll be doing this both on-demand and on a scheduled basis.
I'm trying to decide if I should:
Create an AMI with all my software loaded on it
or
Launch a plain vanilla linux AMI instance and scp my software to it
For the provisioning and automation Boto looks pretty good. Or I could write something with Paramiko. Recommend either or anything else I should be looking it?
Basically I'm looking for advice / success stories, let me know what's working for you.
To answer your bullets about selecting AMIs, I would say that it depends on how much software you're installing.
I have been successful with a hybrid approach, where I build an AMI and load my heavyweight and more stable software. This is the stuff that needs to run an installer, or takes considerable time to install (remember that if you re-install a package every time as part of your startup process, you're paying for the install every time). Then, I upload the small and volatile software at provisioning/startup time. In this bucket goes most of the application code, data, etc. That way, I can change my app and not have to touch the AMI.
The benefits of this approach:
Don't have to pay for running the same software install thousands of times.
AMI can stay fairly stable over time.
Can use software that requires intervention or GUI interaction to install.
Major drawbacks:
Your AMI's OS version will become stale over time.
Your AMI may not be flexible as to the instance type/architecture it will run on. For instance, you may create it on a 32-bit OS and thereby prevent it from running on the High CPU instance types, or vice versa. So you may lock yourself into a pricing scheme.
I don't use Python, so I can't comment on either of the APIs you referenced.
AWS just released the Systems Manager suite, which includes an Automation service that will (among other things) handle your use cases around AMIs.
This question was asked some time ago now but I believe my answer could be useful to other users. I believe the best automations tools available on the market are provided by Cloud Management platforms. For example they offer auto-scaling, configuration software integration (Chef/Puppet), databases replications, dns management...
The most popular cloud management softwares are Scalr (disclaimer: I work there), RightScale and enStratus. Scalr is open-source and released under the Apache 2 license.
Regarding your specific question on AMIs, cloud Management platforms usually provide pre-configured AMIs (at Scalr, we call them roles). If you want to create your own AMI built on an existing instance, you'll be able to create snpashots and use them as a template for future instances.