WebAdmin

It’s nice to be home again! I just got back from a CMS conference in Atlanta, which I was expecting to boring as hell, but actually turned out very interesting. It’s not hard to figure out what CMS I’m speaking about, but I haven’t decided if I want to disclose the name of it because I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. Everyone knows I’m opinionated, however I don’t want this to turn into a rant blog and as it is, I will wait until I’m sure where this thing is going before I commentate.

While I was in Atlanta, I stayed at the Sheraton Buckhead. It was going well until Tuesday afternoon, when the power went out and stayed out until well past midnight. No air conditioning, no Internet…. well, that’s basically all I give a damn about! Luckily, the bar was open, so my good friend and co-worker Jonathan and I hung out playing some DS and drinking a very good micro-brew.

A good friend of mine told me that the sushi in Atlanta was really good. This didn’t seem logical to me, considering Georgia’s further from the coast than most cities you’d consider as good places to get sushi (San Francisco for instance). But what the heck… I went to a place called Hashiguchi Junior, and it was amazing. If you’re ever in the Atlanta area, you should definitely try it! My recommendation: try the White Tuna.

One Vote

So how many times do you get to vote in an election? Well duh, one person, one vote. This concept is lost on the Texas legislature, who ignore the principle and instead play a modified game of musical chairs, where the winner gets their law passed. Trust me, this video will majorly piss you off.

Peace out ya’ll.

Yeah, I know. Sorry. I’ve been busy load testing, as previously posted. I also got burgled, and have been dealing with insurance. It seems there’s a crime wave going on. I’m still sitting on glass in my car, as I can’t seem to find every piece.

We launched our beta website finally. I can’t link to it, because it’s a “private beta”. We don’t want too much traffic of course. But, considering I work for the University of Houston, I don’t think you’ll find it hard to locate the beta site if you’re persistent.

The MySQL Conference has made a “Call for Papers”. I’m considering sending something, but I haven’t decided what to speak about. When I figure it out, I’ll share it here for feedback.

Well, have a good week everyone. More on the beta website later.

We all hate web server load testing. You take everything you’ve worked hard on, and you abuse it until it crumbles. Having taken several cardiac stress tests, I have been the focus of real load testing. I have crumbled.

Done at the busiest time in a project, like when hardware has just been installed or right before the implementation of a new website, it’s failure will certainly guarantee missed deadlines and unscheduled rework.

Many people use apache’s ab (apache benchmark). It comes with apache web server, and it works well. What many people don’t think about is that it is NOT a browser. I know, shocking. What I mean is, if you point ab at index.html, set it to 100 concurrent sessions with a 5000 query assault, my old 486 web server will take that without blinking. The ab application isn’t a browser, and won’t request any of the other content associated with the page. No images, no css, nada. You end up load testing a static page, without loading what a real world user would. This is not reality!

The other popular test application is siege, which is similar to ab, but has more configuration options. My favorite is the URLs file that can be called via a config file (.siegerc), which allows the tester to give a list of all of the real content that is associated with a single page. Once this list is prepared, you can run the test, then divide the results by the total number of content in the URLs file.

This weekend I will (hopefully) also be giving the apache test application called flood a try as well. It is configured via an XML file, and seems very versatile. The apache foundation’s apps like to use XML anywhere they can. Although it looks promising, the last release is from 2002, and there is very little documentation since it is technically still in beta.

One last note on load testing. Be aware of where you’re performing your load testing from. If you’re testing, let’s say, a major university’s web system, doing the test from within the local network is a good idea. Saturating an inbound net connection is a good way to get on the bad side of network administrators. Leave network testing to them, and be sure to let them know when you plan to test before you start. You don’t want to surprise people with mass quantities of traffic. If you look like a Denial of Service attack, you’ll probably be treated like one.