Stress Testing – Suggestions?

[robthecomputerguy]

Hi everyone,

I’ve installed eMember and eStore and have it running on a shared hosting environment, and I’d like to test some rapid fire transactions. I have purchased a program called Fake to help automate some of the testing but I realize what I’d like to test is how the system handles say 5 transactions that occur at the same time – and by the same time, I mean as close as possible.

I’ve been doing some research and testing with this site I’ve been working on for the past year and I’ve noticed that when it comes to WordPress, some shared hosting is really awful and some shared hosting is really not awful. But sooner or later, the system throttles the user in some fashion, and more often than not, that throttle is a page that doesn’t load. So I need to know, if 5 people visit the site and make purchases within 5 minutes, does it all work without a hitch? I frankly don’t see how it can.

I’m wondering if anyone has any tips for testing? I’m thinking of getting some people together in a Google Plus Hangout and just getting in some reasonable sync and yelling, “go!”.

Is there any log I should look for that shows me memory or relevant resource usage?

[wzp]

Who is your hosting provider?

With shared hosting, it all depends on who you are sharing the server with. If you are sharing the server with someone who offers streaming video, you can expect slower response than if you were sharing a server with the local HS chess club.

[admin]

If 5 transaction is all your hosting account handling at the same time it shouldn’t have any issue at all. Feel free to do the simultaneous testing with a bunch of friends. I am pretty sure it will pass. If you have shell access to your server then you can easily log into your server using SSH and then use the UNIX “top” command which will show the CPU and memory usage of your machine so you can monitor it.

Now, the problem I see is somewhere else. if you think that the site you are creating is going to make say for example 5 sales every 10 minutes then that means you will be getting at least around 10,000 traffic per day. There is no way a shared hosting will support that kind of traffic (this is one of those finer details that they don’t tell you when you sign up). They will block/throttle your account if you start to go over 500 traffic per day (the number varies based on the provider but you get the idea). Now, doing heavy server processing on that level of traffic volume is a whole different story.

[robthecomputerguy]

Thank you VERY much because I needed that dose of reality and a good check in on that point. I would say your name but you’re listed as admin key master, why don’t you guys even take on pen names so you can personalize your fabulousness.

To this point – I am indeed trying to see if the hosting provider is going to give us a problem, that’s the idea. But no, it’s not a 10,000 a day kind of thing. But it is easily going to be 30 sales in the hour before a given seminar. My testing is by no means scientific or will it be a guarantee of anything… but I find with shared hosting that you have no idea what’s going on at the server and you can hang up or slow down because of what’s going on at the other 100 sites on the server, it’s not an intelligent multitasking situation.

But for now, I was cool with 5 users doing a checkout all at once, making sure that they didn’t get a lot of hangups or if it was particularly slow.

Thanks again for the reminder.

[Author]

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