Light learning using tsung on elasticsearch

Today, we will learn another software tool, Tsung. As this is just a introduction course, we will not go into details like interpret the statistics if it make sense. This is course plan to introduce how you quickly install, setup, test and show results using tsung. We want quickly acquaint distributed load testing using tsung. Let's first understand what tsung is.

Tsung is an open-source multi-protocol distributed load testing tool. It can be used to stress HTTP, WebDAV, SOAP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP and Jabber/XMPP servers. Tsung is a free software released under the GPLv2 license. That we like sir!

Okay, http is very common and let's pick elasticsearch 1.6.0 for this test. You can download elasticsearch from elastic.co , extract the content and just launch from command line. See below.

 user@localhost:~/Desktop/elasticsearch-1.6.0/bin$ ./elasticsearch  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:10,756][INFO ][node           ] [Futurist] version[1.6.0], pid[16404], build[cdd3ac4/2015-06-09T13:36:34Z]  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:10,757][INFO ][node           ] [Futurist] initializing ...  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:10,762][INFO ][plugins         ] [Futurist] loaded [], sites []  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:10,863][INFO ][env           ] [Futurist] using [1] data paths, mounts [[/ (/dev/sda5)]], net usable_space [15.4gb], net total_space [215.2gb], types [ext3]  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:13,833][INFO ][node           ] [Futurist] initialized  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:13,834][INFO ][node           ] [Futurist] starting ...  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:13,960][INFO ][transport        ] [Futurist] bound_address {inet[/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:9300]}, publish_address {inet[/192.168.1.2:9300]}  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:13,978][INFO ][discovery        ] [Futurist] elasticsearch/eSG-tzQuQdCz5QKIomYm5Q  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:17,774][INFO ][cluster.service     ] [Futurist] new_master [Futurist][eSG-tzQuQdCz5QKIomYm5Q][VerticalHorizon][inet[/192.168.1.2:9300]], reason: zen-disco-join (elected_as_master)  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:17,809][INFO ][http           ] [Futurist] bound_address {inet[/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:9200]}, publish_address {inet[/192.168.1.2:9200]}  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:17,810][INFO ][node           ] [Futurist] started  
 [2015-07-04 09:46:17,934][INFO ][gateway         ] [Futurist] recovered [0] indices into cluster_state  

A single node elasticsearch with no index nor mapping. We just wanna quickly use elasticsearch as software under test.

Next, let's install tsung. If you are using debian, that's a good news! See below.

 $ sudo apt-get install tsung  

easy peasy. Okay, now let's create a directory tsung in user home directory. Then create two files. See below.

 user@localhost:~$ mkdir tsung  
 user@localhost:~$ cd tsung  
 user@localhost:~/tsung$ cat query.json   
 {"size":10,"query":{"filtered":{"query":{"match_all":{}}}}}  
 $ cat tsung.xml  
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
 <!DOCTYPE tsung SYSTEM "/usr/share/tsung/tsung-1.0.dtd" []>  
 <tsung loglevel="info">  
   
  <clients>  
   <client host="localhost" use_controller_vm="true" cpu="1" maxusers="30000000"/>  
  </clients>  
   
  <servers>  
   <server host="localhost" port="9200" type="tcp"/>  
  </servers>  
   
  <load>  
   <arrivalphase phase="1" duration="1" unit="minute">  
    <users arrivalrate="5" unit="second"/>  
   </arrivalphase>  
  </load>  
   
  <sessions>  
   <session name="es_load" weight="1" type="ts_http">  
    <request>  
    <http url="/myindex/_search"  
        method="GET"  
        contents_from_file="/home/user/tsung/query.json" />  
    </request>  
   </session>  
  </sessions>  
 </tsung>  

Now we are ready to do the load test, you can start tsung with the configuration descriptor. See below.

 user@localhost:~/tsung$ tsung -f /home/user/tsung/tsung.xml start  
 Starting Tsung  
 "Log directory is: /home/user/.tsung/log/20150704-1104"  
 user@localhost:~/tsung$  

Give a few minute for it to run and you should be able to check the log output. Once it is done, then let's generate the graph.

 user@localhost:~/tsung$ ls  
 total 8.0K  
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 60 Jul 4 09:33 query.json  
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 724 Jul 4 11:04 tsung.xml  
 user@localhost:~/tsung$ mkdir show_me_da_graph  
 user@localhost:~/tsung$ cd show_me_da_graph/  
 user@localhost:~/tsung/show_me_da_graph$ /usr/lib/tsung/bin/tsung_stats.pl --stats /home/user/.tsung/log/20150704-1104/tsung.log   
 creating subdirectory data   
 creating subdirectory gnuplot_scripts   
 creating subdirectory images   
 warn, last interval (5) not equal to the first, use the first one (10)  
 No data for Bosh  
 No data for Match  
 No data for Event  
 No data for Async  
 No data for Errors  
 user@localhost:~/tsung/show_me_da_graph$ ls  
 total 32K  
 drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4.0K Jul 4 11:07 data  
 drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4.0K Jul 4 11:07 gnuplot_scripts  
 drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4.0K Jul 4 11:07 images  
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 3.7K Jul 4 11:07 gnuplot.log  
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 7.9K Jul 4 11:07 report.html  
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 7.1K Jul 4 11:07 graph.html  
 user@localhost:~/tsung/show_me_da_graph$ chromium graph.html  
 [18334:18334:0704/110724:ERROR:nss_util.cc(819)] After loading Root Certs, loaded==false: NSS error code: -8018  
 Created new window in existing browser session.  

Now look at the beautiful output! If you don't have chromium browser, copy this link and paste into your browser url. file:///home/user/tsung/show_me_da_graph/graph.html . Change the link where appropriately in your workstation. See screenshow below.



If tsung is what you like, consider going into details of tsung. Tsung provide a comprehensive documentation! That's it for this article, I hope you learn something.