NimbostratusHi
I need to create a irule or a custom monitor to hit a single page on a web-site multiple time. the point is to test the limits of the server. how many hit before the server crashes.. is this possible on the F5...
Employee
Nimbostratus
the problem is that they want to use the F5. there logic is that the F5 will pass on the traffic anyway...
NimbostratusNot sure how sound that logic is, first of all this is not really what iRules and the F5 devices are designed to do they are not designed to stress test your web servers. You may be able to do this using a monitor or an iRule but I am not sure I would fully trust the results. Second you are putting the F5 in front of your servers so you would want to test through the F5 not from it to get a proper stress test of the infrastructure. Then run the same tests directly against your servers to test the individual load levels so you can determine what setting you may want to use on the F5 to optimize the performance of the application.
AltostratusAs Mike mentioned, running a load test from the LTM leaves that appliance out of the test, which is not good practice. To a degree it's like load-testing a website by running the test from the web server (which I've seen people do...).
Although the open-source version of WebLoad seems to be dead, you should be able to find a copy you can use to run a relatively decent load test.
Nimbostratus
15 Free Functionality And Load Testing Tools For Web Applications