Web server benchmarking is the process of estimating a web server

Web server

Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....

 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
  ApacheBench
  ApacheBench is a single-threaded command line computer program for measuring the performance of HTTP web servers. Originally designed to test the Apache HTTP Server, it is actually generic enough to test any web server....
  
   (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
  Curl-loader
  curl-loader is an open-source software performance testing tool written in the C programming language.- Features :curl-loader is capable of simulating application behavior of hundreds of thousands of HTTP/HTTPS and FTP/FTPS clients, each with its own source IP-address...
  
   a powerful loading, testing and benchmarking open-source tool
• OpenSTA
  OpenSTA
  OpenSTA is a feature-rich GUI-based web server benchmarking utility that can perform scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests with performance measurements. It is freely available and distributable under the open source GNU General Public License. OpenSTA currently only runs on Microsoft...
  
  , distributed software testing architecture which can perform scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests with performance measurements from Win32 platforms http://opensta.org/
• HTTP Test Tool
  HTTP Test Tool
  HTTP Test Tool is an open source scriptable protocol test tool for HTTP protocol based products like web servers, web browsers, web applications or ICAP....
  
   a script driven command line tool
• Httperf
  Httperf
  httperf is a testing tool to measure the performance of web servers. It was originally developed by David Mosberger and other staff at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories.httperf is able to test HTTP pipelining workloads.- References :* , ITmedia...
  
   a command line program originally developed by Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories

Web application benchmarks

Web application benchmarks measure the performance of Web application servers and database servers used to host dynamic Web applications. TPC-W

TPC-W

TPC-W was a web server and database performance benchmark, proposed by Transaction Processing Performance Council.This benchmark defined the complete Web-based shop for searching, browsing and ordering books. The system under testing needed to provide the implementation of this shop...

, is a common benchmark emulating an online bookstore with synthetic workload generation.

External links

• Microsoft's patterns & practices Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
• Stress tools to test your Web server at Microsoft
  Microsoft
  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
  
  's knowledge base
• Open Source Performance Testing tools
• Online tool for measuring website performance