Micro Army

This is a tool to quickly turn on some number of AWS micro instances and have them slam a webserver simultaneously. You can configure different scripts to run when the machines are 'fired'. This allows for just about any kind of load testing from HTTP to WebSockets.

The micro instances are controlled via SSH in parallel thanks to Eventlet + Paramiko.

The micros report the statistics of their run back to the controlling script. At this time, there is no method to "aggregate" statistics. The response is just printed out.

After running the test you can shut down all of your micros and quit micro army.

Slides

I gave a talk on Micro Army back in May of 2011. The slides are available here.

100 boxes in parallel

I recently tested deployment of 100 ec2 micros. On average I found I was able to turn configure 2 micros in about 58 seconds. I tried configuring 100 micros in parallel and found this only took 106 seconds. Slightly more, but negligibly so.

Example Use:

This is what it looks like to use microarmy.

$ ./command_center.py

microarmy> long_help

  long_help:    This.
  status:       Get info about current cannons
  deploy:       Deploys N cannons
  setup:        Runs the setup functions on each host
  config:       Allows a user to specify existing cannons
  find_cannons  Find pre-existing cannons and add them to the artillery
  fire:         Asks for a url and then fires the cannons
  mfire:        Runs `fire` multiple times and aggregates totals
  term:         Terminate cannons
  quit:         Exit command center

microarmy> deploy
Deploying cannons...  Done!
Hosts config: [(u'i-4c4ff03c', u'ec2-107-21-75-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-4e4ff03e', u'ec2-50-42-133-31.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]

microarmy> setup #run build_cannon.sh on the machines
  Setting up cannons - time: 1317352247.23
  Loading cannons...  Done!
  Siege config written, deploying to cannons
  Configuring siege...  Done!
  Siege urls written, deploying to cannons
  Configuring urls...  Done!
  Finished setup - time: 1317352305.56
  Sending reboot message to cannons

microarmy> fire #run projectile.sh on the machines
Results ]------------------
Num_Trans,Elapsed,Tran_Rate
3424,9.15,374.21
3424,9.17,373.39

microarmy> term

microarmy> quit

Find and reuse previously deployed cannons

Sometimes you might forget that you deployed a whole mess of cannons already. In that case, run the following...

microarmy> find_cannons
Deployed cannons: [(u'i-1a6d127a', u'ec2-50-17-80-241.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-1c6d127c', u'ec2-184-73-117-126.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e06d1280', u'ec2-50-16-106-209.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e26d1282', u'ec2-50-17-26-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e46d1284', u'ec2-50-16-169-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e66d1286', u'ec2-184-73-114-245.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e86d1288', u'ec2-184-72-92-234.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ea6d128a', u'ec2-184-73-148-253.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ec6d128c', u'ec2-107-20-112-149.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ee6d128e', u'ec2-50-16-24-210.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f06d1290', u'ec2-204-236-251-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f46d1294', u'ec2-50-19-24-63.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f66d1296', u'ec2-107-20-95-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f86d1298', u'ec2-174-129-76-108.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-fa6d129a', u'ec2-50-16-64-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]
Would you like to import these cannons now? (y/n) y

Now you have a whole new battery of cannons to fire away. To be safe, you may want to run setup again.

Terminate all cannons we know about

Thanks to tagging instances in EC2, we can get an inventory of all the cannons we've deployed over time. That's good because you don't want to leave those little beasts running.

If you're all done and want to be sure your instances are terminated, do the following...

microarmy> find_cannons
Deployed cannons: [(u'i-1a6d127a', u'ec2-50-17-80-241.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-1c6d127c', u'ec2-184-73-117-126.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e06d1280', u'ec2-50-16-106-209.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e26d1282', u'ec2-50-17-26-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e46d1284', u'ec2-50-16-169-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e66d1286', u'ec2-184-73-114-245.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e86d1288', u'ec2-184-72-92-234.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ea6d128a', u'ec2-184-73-148-253.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ec6d128c', u'ec2-107-20-112-149.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ee6d128e', u'ec2-50-16-24-210.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f06d1290', u'ec2-204-236-251-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f46d1294', u'ec2-50-19-24-63.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f66d1296', u'ec2-107-20-95-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f86d1298', u'ec2-174-129-76-108.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-fa6d129a', u'ec2-50-16-64-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]
Would you like to import these cannons now? (y/n) y
microarmy> cleanup
Deployed cannons destroyed

Requirements

There are only a few requirements. Everything required for the micros is installed on the micros, after all.

$ pip install eventlet paramiko boto pyyaml

Config

You should create a local_settings.py inside the repo and fill in the following keys. Look at settings.py for more information.

• aws_access_key
• aws_secret_key
• security_groups
• key_pair_name
• num_cannons
• ec2_ssh_key
• cannon_init_script
• cannon_projectile_script

Here is an example:

aws_access_key = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST'
aws_secret_key = 'abcdefghij/KLMNOPQRSTUVWXY/zabcdefghijkl'
security_groups = ['MicroArmy'] # must support incoming SSH + outgoing HTTP
key_pair_name = 'micros'
ec2_ssh_key = '/Users/jd/.ec2/micros.pem'
num_cannons = 2
cannon_init_script = 'build_cannon.sh'
cannon_projectile_script = 'projectile.sh'