performance-testing

Performance Testing

Setup

• Download and install gatling.
• Edit apicast/conf/nginx.conf to set worker_connections to a much reasonable setting for a development machine
• Launch a development apicast with the following parameters:

export APICAST_LOG_LEVEL=error
export THREESCALE_CONFIG_FILE=config.json
sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfiles=65536
sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfilesperproc=65536
sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 65536 65536
ulimit -n 65536
bin/apicast -i 3600 -m on -w 8 &> apicast.log

WARNING: On MacOS, you have to run apicast as root to be able to push up the maximum number of open files (ulimit -n).

NOTE: the -w 8 tells nginx to start 8 workers. As a rule of thumb, set the number of workers to the number of available cores.

• Install and run a rsyslog server:

sudo brew install rsyslog
/usr/local/Cellar/rsyslog/*/sbin/rsyslogd -4 -n -f rsyslog.conf -i "$PWD/rsyslog.pid"

Recording a scenario (OPTIONAL)

Gatling scenario are available in the performance-testing directory. However, you can record your own by :

• Launcing the recorder and starting a recording
• Doing a test request through the gatling proxy

export http_proxy=http://localhost:8000
curl "http://localhost:8080/?user_key=secret" -D - -X POST -d "data"

Then, you can customize the scenario to loop over the request you recorded and add virtual users.

Running a scenario against the vanilla apicast

Run the gatling scenario:

gatling.sh -sf . -s itix.Apicast1kPOST

Running a scenario against the apicast with the logging module

Then, re-start apicast with the following environment:

export APICAST_MODULE=custom/verbose
export SYSLOG_HOST=127.0.0.1.xip.io
export SYSLOG_PORT=1601
export SYSLOG_PROTO=tcp
export SYSLOG_PERIODIC_FLUSH=5
export SYSLOG_FLUSH_LIMIT=10240

Run the gatling scenario:

gatling.sh -sf . -s itix.Apicast1kPOST

Check that you have exactly 200000 lines in the apicast.log generated by the apicast server:

$ wc -l apicast.log
  200000 apicast.log

Also, check that you have exactly 200000 requests logged in /tmp/apicast.log:

$ grep -o '"http_version"' /tmp/apicast.log |wc -l
  200000

NOTE: you might have to wait a few seconds after gatling completed the performance test to have the 200000 lines in the apicast.log. This is due to the SYSLOG_PERIODIC_FLUSH parameter (5 seconds by default) that is needed to flush the last requests from the log buffers.

Reference

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-optimize-nginx-configuration
• http://blog.martinfjordvald.com/2011/04/optimizing-nginx-for-high-traffic-loads/
• http://gatling.io/docs/current/general/simulation_setup/#injection
• http://gatling.io/docs/current/cheat-sheet/
• https://superuser.com/a/867865