OpenSTA is designed to assist the load and stress testing of Web sites.
This guide is intended to give new and existing OpenSTA users a practical introduction to the functionality provided by the OpenSTA environment. The sections are designed to follow a logical sequence through the key components necessary to build a performance test suite for a Web application using OpenSTA. It introduces the basic concepts you will use to load and stress test Web sites.
Load testing is defined as: testing the server or application in a way that is considered operationally normal with a normal-to-heavy number of concurrent users.
Stress testing is defined as: testing the server or application in a way that is considered operationally abnormal.
Examples of stress tests include:
Performance testing includes both load and stress testing to gauge how the Web site (application) performs.
This guide is based on OpenSTA version 0.9.2. The screenshots and details may vary slightly for other versions.
The load and stress testing of a Web site requires access to that Web site. To help you in learning the tools in the OpenSTA environment, by controlling the system under test, the OpenSTA team has created various demonstration Web sites for this and other OpenSTA guides. The Web site referenced for this guide is Which US President?, or FindPres. This Web site has been designed to illustrate the simplest of common Web application behavior.
The FindPres Web application can be accessed online, or is available as Perl CGI source for local installation. It is strongly recommended that you download the CGI source of the Web application and install it on a server local to the OpenSTA installation. This will allow you to maximize your understanding of the testing performed in the examples in this guide, by allowing you to monitor the effects that your testing is having on the Web server; you can also make your own experiments in addition to the examples given in this document. Running the application locally also reduces the chances of the OpenSTA Web server becoming overloaded; if this were to happen, it might prove impossible to continue supporting the convenience of an online copy.
Instructions for acquiring and installing this Web application locally can be found at:
The intention of the OpenSTA team has been to design a simple and easily installable Perl Web application. However, installation of the application in some environments may require modifications. Any modifications made to support very different environments (such as rewriting in PHP or ASP), bugs found, or any other suggestions, would be very helpful for further versions of this and other guides, and would be gratefully received at: demosite@opensta.org
To download a zip archive of this Getting Started Guide, please visit:
To download the FindPres demosite and view installation instructions and latest details, please visit:
To download the OpenSTA installable and view the installation instructions, please visit:
To download the source code for OpenSTA, please visit:
The remaining sections of the Getting Started Guide are:
Each of these sections is dependent on the preceding section. Working through each section will enable you to explore the main features of OpenSTA and to gain an overall understanding of the environment and basic use of the tools included.