Vegeta

Vegeta is a versatile HTTP load testing tool built out of need to drill HTTP services with a constant request rate. It can be used both as a command line utility and a library.

Install

Pre-compiled executables

You can download already compiled executables for Linux and Mac OS X.

Linux 64 bit
URL: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83217940/vegeta-linux-amd64.tar.gz
SHA256 of the executable:
c13be78b0f56238e17c448ca5f3c551f90ced9465e19a401122869e736a0d183

Linux 32 bit
URL: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83217940/vegeta-linux-386.tar.gz
SHA256 of the executable:
48899772e061ecad954bc156867b1d3c183e9aa211a4b63436e8b75c34772609

Mac OS X 64 bit
URL: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83217940/vegeta-darwin-amd64.tar.gz
SHA256 of the executable:
6264bde2504f14617585e1af81a3ebfd720df7f366c1412189be77fa4f32c70e

Mac OS X 32 bit
URL: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83217940/vegeta-darwin-386.tar.gz
SHA256 of the executable:
23f4202712c330e3786e1bd3e114115de573a504e1ecddc03e5ae1e09c8a76ff

Source

You need go installed and GOBIN in your PATH. Once that is done, run the command:

$ go get github.com/tsenart/vegeta
$ go install github.com/tsenart/vegeta

Usage (CLI)

$ vegeta -h
Usage of vegeta:
  -duration=10s: Duration of the test
  -ordering="random": Attack ordering [sequential, random]
  -output="stdout": Reporter output file
  -rate=50: Requests per second
  -reporter="text": Reporter to use [text, plot:timings]
  -targets="targets.txt": Targets file

-duration

Specifies the amount of time to issue request to the targets. The internal concurrency structure's setup has this value as a variable. The actual run time of the test can be longer than specified due to the responses delay.

-ordering

Specifies the ordering of target attack. The default is random and it will randomly pick one of the targets per request without ever choosing that target again. The other option is sequential and it does what you would expect it to do.

-output

Specifies the output file to which the report will be written to. The default is stdout.

-rate

Specifies the requests per second rate to issue against the targets. The actual request rate can vary slightly due to things like garbage collection, but overall it should stay very close to the specified.

-reporter

Specifies the reporting type to display the results with. The default is the text report printed to stdout.

-reporter=text

Time(avg)	Requests	Success		Bytes(rx/tx)
152.341ms	200		    17.00%		251.00/0.00

Count:		49	30	39	48	34
Status:		500	404	409	503	200

Error Set:
Server Timeout
Page Not Found

-reporter=plot:timings

Plots the request timings in SVG format.

-targets

Specifies the attack targets in a line sepated file. The format should be as follows:

GET http://goku:9090/path/to/dragon?item=balls
HEAD http://goku:9090/path/to/success
...

Usage (Library)

package main

import (
  vegeta "github.com/tsenart/vegeta/lib"
  "time"
  "os"
)

func main() {
  targets := vegeta.NewTargets([]string{"GET http://localhost:9100/"})
  rate := uint64(100) // per second
  duration := 4 * time.Second
  reporter := vegeta.NewTextReporter()

  vegeta.Attack(targets, rate, duration, reporter)

  reporter.Report(os.Stdout)
}

Limitations

There will be an upper bound of the supported rate which varies on the machine being used. You could be CPU bound (unlikely), memory bound (more likely) or have system resource limits being reached which ought to be tuned for the process execution. The important limits for us are file descriptors and processes. On a UNIX system you can get and set the current soft-limit values for a user.

$ ulimit -n # file descriptors
2560
$ ulimit -u # processes / threads
709

Just pass a new number as the argument to change it.

TODO

• Add timeout options to the requests
• Cluster mode (to overcome single machine limits)
• HTTPS

Licence

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013 Tomás Senart

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.