Web Load Tools - Open Source Load Testing Tools
Author: Bill Ricardi
There are a number of load testing tools on the market today, both commercial and free. To be frank, none of the commercial products that I've demo'ed have been any better than the open source tools that I use all of the time. They may have a slightly fancier interface, slightly better reporting tools, or somewhat better documentation. But in my opinion, that doesn't make up for the advantage of having an entire open source community reviewing the code for bugs, making contributions, and making sure that the testing tools are spyware-free.
So without further ado, here is a list of the free load testing software that I find the most useful, and a quick review of their strengths:
DieselTest – Regression Testing Tool
DieselTest is NOT a traditional load testing tool. It is more of a regression testing tool, in that it only records mouse and keyboard driven scripts and plays them back to simulate users actually using the website. The scripting is fairly weak. But its pretty easy to use. So it does have some limited scope use in Front End Automation, most useful in Soak testing.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dieseltest/
OpenSTA - HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tester
OpenSTA is one of the most flexible load testing tools on the market today. Not only can it use recorded scripts and play them back, but it can convert the recorded macro into a powerful script that is easily edited and injected as a hypertext stream. It is also well documented (link below). OpenSTA is the best of both worlds, and is suitable for just about every form of load testing.
http://opensta.org/docs/gsg/https_t2.htm
The Grinder – Generic Jython load tester
Using the Java implementation of Python (Jython), The Grinder is a script-only, feature rich load testing platform. Possibly the most powerful lightweight free load testers on the market, but also the most difficult to master. No GUI to speak of, very little in the way of examples... but at least it has a good FAQ. It isn't useful for Front End Automation, but otherwise The Grinder is flexible and infinitely useful if you can master it. This is the programmer's preferred load testing tool.
http://grinder.sourceforge.net/
JMeter – Most popular graphical load tester
Without a doubt, the most downloaded free load testing software on the planet. It has a GUI written in Java, which means you can use it on just about any operating system, so your testing is truly portable. It has a flexible scripting language. And it has plugins for all sorts of strange test scenarios. Best of all, it is one of the most completely documented load testing applications out there, with ample tutorials and great community support. It is useful for just about every test type you'll run into. Above average power, good ease of use, and strong expandability are all reasons why Jmeter is the most popular testing tool out there.
http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/
http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/usermanual/get-started.html
Of course, there are a couple of tools that you should have on hand for general debugging. Your operating system will have basic network usage monitoring, so you can see if you're having any sort of bandwidth issues on your end. But there is no better network interface snooping tool than Wireshark ( http://www.wireshark.org/ ). Make sure you have it on hand, just in case you need to debug the IP stack.
So there you have it, my suggestions for automated load testing tools that you can get for free. If you have a favorite that isn't on the list, feel free to bring them up on the uTest Crash Course forums, and we'll review them for inclusion in future versions of this document. Do your research on Google and try them all out.