Load-testing xmpp server

Question

I am looking for a tool capable of generating multiple Xmpp connections to load-test a XMPP server with a secure connection, especially starttls.

For a xmpp plain text authentication I had used jab_simul(followed this tutorial) and tsung both with success.

But I was unable to use the tolls above for the starttls,I peeked into the code of both tools and tried different configurations of the tools.

Another option I am pondering is using a xmpp library like eXmpp and make a specific load-testing tool myself with, instead of altering jab_simul (C software with comments in language i do not understand) or altering tsung(all purpose load-testing tool, so lots of place where you can go wrong).

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short-story - I am looking for a tool or advice to stress-testing/load-testing a xmpp server.

Answer 1

There's also the recently started XMPP benchmarking project called xmppench which aims to be a high-performance benchmarking tool simulating some reasonable use cases of XMPP servers. It's written in C++, based on Swiften and boost.

Answer 2

We are facing exactly the same challenge right now. After deep consideration we found out that only especially build software can deliver the load we want to test. (Remember, you can configure ejabberd to something very specific :-)

For that we developed a small library called xmpp_talker https://github.com/burinov/xmpp_talker (Apache Licence) which is a kind of xmpp client made as a gen_server. I find it is a very nice starting point to build any kind of load simulation software. There is also echo_worker example included. So, you have good base to start. At the moment xmpp_talker is suited for exmpp 0.9.7. As far as I know in a few days will be out version 1.0.0. (or 0.9.9?) There are many bug fixes (trust me you don't want to know about them). On monday I will release xmpp_talker for exmpp 0.9.8 with proper service interruption handling.

In case you deside to go the same way xmpp_talker could be useful for you.

Added: Here is also great article that is realted to the topic: https://support.process-one.net/doc/display/EXMPP/Scalable+XMPP+bots+with+erlang+and+exmpp