[mootothemax]

I really wish people would test their sites before doing this.

I'm conflicted; whilst ultimately you're right, it's very easy to type those words, and not as easy to test for a realistic load.

It's not as simple as throwing ab at your website, you need to use a proper tool (e.g. JMeter), make sure you're testing realistic user behaviour (even basics such as whether images and CSS have an impact), and ensure that you're not getting a false sense of security (e.g. how many connections are actually hitting the server at the same time?).

So yeah, whilst I kinda agree with you, I think it's a lot easier to say than to carry out.

[pc86]

I totally agree, and if I tried to do it I'd probably botch it myself. I wouldn't even know where to start as I've ever built anything that needs to be under this kind of load where the deployment isn't handled by people better at it than I.

[beachstartup]

amplified log playback works best in my experience.

of course, this requires at least some public traffic to play back. i've only used proprietary tools for this in my personal experience, but i believe jmeter has this functionality (log sampling).

[pc86]

This seems really interesting. When you say proprietary tools, I assume you mean more custom-built solutions and less paid tools available to anyone?

[beachstartup]

yeah, tools built in-house to test specific apps, not commercial apps