load_testing.rst

Load Testing CKAN

What we did

1. Put db in some standard state and start server:

   paster db clean && paster db create && paster create-test-data search
   # alternatively we could use a dump of the live db
   # psql -h localhost --user tester ckantest < ....
   
   # may want to create a production config
   paster serve development.ini
   

2. Do tests:

   # 5 results for this query
   ab -n 100 -c 10 -e myresults.csv "http://localhost:5000/api/search/package?q=government&all_fields=1"
   # remote test host
   # ab -n 100 -c 10 -e myresults.csv "http://test.ckan.net/api/search/package?q=geo&all_fields=1"
   

3. Examine results, fix, and repeat!

Research

Testing Tools

Apache Benchmarking Tool

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html
• Well known and standard.
• Can run against local or remote but local preferred
• ab -n 100 -c 10 -e myresults.csv http://www.okfn.org/

funkload

• Mature and python based
• http://funkload.nuxeo.org/
• Functional testing primarily but with load testing support

Individual scripts

• http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/load_test.html

High Performance Servers and Caching Utilities

memcached

• http://memcached.org/
• In memory caching with access via a port
• Very heavily used

Tornado

• http://www.tornadoweb.org/
• Built by friendfeed and open-sourced
• Asynchronous