AlphaWorks: Web Performance Tools
by Volker Weber
This looks very promising. Note to self: Check it out soon !
What is Web Performance Tools?Web Performance Tools is a set of applications that allow stress-testing of a Web server, a Web site, and/or a Web application. The two current applications are stress and record.
How does it work?
Stress is a high-performance, simple, threaded HTTP engine that is capable of simulating hundreds or even thousands of HTTP clients, using a highly configurable set of directives in a human-readable and easily modified configuration file. Record is a simple eavesdropping proxy that will record a user's session against a Web server for later playback in stress.
When the two applications are combined, a stress configuration can be easily and quickly built that, with minor tuning, allows evaluation of the usability of a server, site, or Web application.