Benchmarking screencast

[Harkins]

For the folks who'd like to measure and improve the scalability of their game, here's a nice screencast about ab and httperf, two free load-testing tools that are great for getting started or dealing with hotspots.

http://railslab.newrelic.com/2009/06/23/episode-15-load-testing-part-1

He defines load testing and walks through how to use the two tools: what they're useful for, what the options are, and how to read the output. Don't mind the URL, the only Rails-specific content is a 5-second mention of big cookies.

There's going to be a second video with info on sessions, autobench, and visualizations, but I don't know when it'll go live.

[karnedge]

This looks really great. Can't wait to watch it when I get home (On my mobile at work atm). And this isn't geared towards just Rails just to clarify?

[Harkins]

It's not. The other videos on the site are very much about Rails, but this you'll never see a single line of Ruby in this video (or presumably the next).

[Harkins]

The second part is up: http://railslab.newrelic.com/2009/06/23/episode-16-load-testing-part-2