[NBLUG/talk] Stress Testing servers

[ME]

Steve said:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 10:15:53AM -0800, ME wrote:
>> You could quickly place a load of messages to be delivered by taking two
>> servers that are similar in configuration and setup test account that
>> have
>> .forward to process each message and forward the e-mail back to the
>> first
>> server sending account which also has a .forward to forward to 2 more
>> accounts.
>>
>> 1 message becomes 2 becomes 4 becomes 8 become 16 becomes 32 become
>> 64...
>
> This is a cool idea also.. Hmm.. =)  I may just go this route.
>
>
>> Another method is to pubslish many, many e-mail addresses all over
>> usenet
>> and sell them to spammers and let them provide the incoming data to
>> stress
>> test your server. ;-)
>
> Heheh =) I'll do this when I install spamassassin to stress test that lol!

Oh. SpamAssassin can be a rather large resource hog. It can use lots of
memory and disk as well as a little network and disk too. Please install
spamassassin first, or else any test will show you a max message that is
higher than what is really functional.

Also, Kyle brings up a good point and introduces a really good idea. If
users will be using the same mail server that is used to send/receive
e-mail to also pickup their email with pop, imap or webmail with imap/pop
then each of these adds more to the drains on system resources.

There are command-line based pop and imap clients that can be used to
query, list and read messages from client machines. These can also be
automated to simulate loads.

-ME