Performance testing/benchmarking an Apache media download server

[rosglo]

Hello Folks,
Hope this is the right section:
Have just set up a media download server using Apache and RHEL, running on a vm provided by our central it function.
I need to run some benchmarks/performance tests to ensure it does what it needs to do, before sign off.
Most of the "load" testing tools I can find seem to based on just hitting the web server rather than downloading actual files.
We need to test Apache but at the same time to stress the underlying hardware (attached storage / connections / etc.),
Can anyone recommend a suitable test program?
Thanks,
Ross.

 

[Noway2]

How about a simple wget command from a command line or even multiple wget commands sent from multiple locations simultaneously? You could couple this with some network monitoring tools to verify the data throughput rate.

 

[rosglo]

Thanks Norway2.
Had a play with wget but I really need to generate 40 or 50 concurrent requests.
Cheers,
Ross

 

[Noway2]

I don't know of any existing software package to do this form of testing.

What you could do is write a simple executable to fork off the 40 or 50 copies of the (identical) program which uses the EXEC function to call wget. Such a program should be easy to write with a simple for loop to fork and one very simple function to issue the wget.

 

[rosglo]

Thank again, Noway2.
Unfortunately, even basic programming is beyond my capability.
I have been trialling jmeter and while not exactly what I was looking for, it does put some load on the server and run concurrently from a number of computers, may achieve what I need.
Ross.

 

[lgarner]

Paessler and WAPT are two programs that I've used. Each has strengths & weaknesses, but basically programs like that run macros to step through your site, and allow you to run them as multiple users.