Web server benchmarking
Web server benchmarking is the process of estimating a web server performance in order to find if the server can serve sufficiently high workload.
Key parameters
The performance is usually measured in terms of:
- Number of requests that can be served per second (depending on the type of request, etc.);
- Latency response time in milliseconds for each new connection or request;
- Throughput in bytes per second (depending on file size, cached or not cached content, available network bandwidth, etc.).
The measurements must be performed under a varying load of clients and requests per client.
Tools for benchmarking
Load testing (stress/performance testing) a web server can be performed using automation/analysis tools such as:
- ApacheBench (or ab), a command line program bundled with Apache HTTP Server
- Apache JMeter an Open Source, Java program to make scenarios for several protocols: HTTP, AJP, JDBC and different load types.
- Curl-loader a powerful loading, testing and benchmarking open-source tool
- Httperf a command line program originally developed by Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories
- OpenSTA, distributed software testing architecture which can perform scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests with performance measurements from Win32 platforms [1]
Web application benchmarks
Web application benchmarks measure the performance of Web application servers and database servers used to host dynamic Web applications. TPC-W, is a common benchmark emulating an online bookstore with synthetic workload generation.