ab is a tool for benchmarking web servers. It generate large amount of concurrent requests to a web site, simulating high traffic. This helps you identify how many visitors your web server able to handle.
1 | ab -c 30 -n 10000 URL_OF_THE_SITE |
Here we generate 30 concurrent requests. Total of 10K requests are made for the benchmarking session.
ab is part of Apache, you can find more details at
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/programs/ab.html
On Debian/Ubuntu, you can install ab with
1 | apt install -y apache2-utils |
Here is a sample benchmark result. Apache vs Nginx
001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 | boby@hon-pc-01:~$ ab -c 50 -n 1000 http://localhost:8080/This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1706008 $>Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/Benchmarking localhost (be patient)Completed 100 requestsCompleted 200 requestsCompleted 300 requestsCompleted 400 requestsCompleted 500 requestsCompleted 600 requestsCompleted 700 requestsCompleted 800 requestsCompleted 900 requestsCompleted 1000 requestsFinished 1000 requestsServer Software: nginx/1.11.5Server Hostname: localhostServer Port: 8080Document Path: /Document Length: 21 bytesConcurrency Level: 50Time taken for tests: 0.075 secondsComplete requests: 1000Failed requests: 0Total transferred: 252000 bytesHTML transferred: 21000 bytesRequests per second: 13292.75 [#/sec] (mean)Time per request: 3.761 [ms] (mean)Time per request: 0.075 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)Transfer rate: 3271.26 [Kbytes/sec] receivedConnection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median maxConnect: 0 1 0.8 1 4Processing: 1 3 1.4 2 7Waiting: 0 2 1.5 2 7Total: 2 4 1.2 3 7Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 3 66% 4 75% 4 80% 5 90% 5 95% 6 98% 7 99% 7 100% 7 (longest request)boby@hon-pc-01:~$ ab -c 50 -n 1000 http://localhost/This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1706008 $>Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/Benchmarking localhost (be patient)Completed 100 requestsCompleted 200 requestsCompleted 300 requestsCompleted 400 requestsCompleted 500 requestsCompleted 600 requestsCompleted 700 requestsCompleted 800 requestsCompleted 900 requestsCompleted 1000 requestsFinished 1000 requestsServer Software: Apache/2.4.18Server Hostname: localhostServer Port: 80Document Path: /Document Length: 21 bytesConcurrency Level: 50Time taken for tests: 0.687 secondsComplete requests: 1000Failed requests: 0Total transferred: 267000 bytesHTML transferred: 21000 bytesRequests per second: 1454.55 [#/sec] (mean)Time per request: 34.375 [ms] (mean)Time per request: 0.687 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)Transfer rate: 379.26 [Kbytes/sec] receivedConnection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median maxConnect: 0 0 0.5 0 3Processing: 2 34 129.6 4 601Waiting: 2 34 128.8 4 600Total: 2 34 130.0 4 602Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 4 66% 4 75% 6 80% 6 90% 7 95% 597 98% 601 99% 601 100% 602 (longest request)boby@hon-pc-01:~$ |
If you check Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms), you will see Nginx was able to service all requests under 7ms. With Apache, it take 597 ms or more for 95% of the 1000 request we made during the benchmark session.
