Hello Alex, Have been dreaming of such tool as well ... I just wish I was still a student, with an ocean of time :-)
You clearly wrote the description with a lot of enthusiasm. I really hope someone accepts the challenge. Maarten On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 2:10 AM, Alex Karasulu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi students and potential MINA mentors, > > I had a couple conversations with a few peeps that wished they had a month > or two to write a slick new framework for load testing MINA based > applications while using MINA itself to write the framework. My > experiences > with MINA and various crappy tools out there make me realize that > performance tuning a network application is half the battle. I know > others > probably feel the same. > > Then all this GSoC stuff is going on and the idea occurs to one of us (not > me it was Emmanuel's idea) that we can make this a nice tight discrete > project where a student can accomplish this task while learning about MINA > and getting involved in our community. This is just a win win situation. > > The idea is simple. We have a set of load injecting worker processes that > are coordinated by managers on each load injecting host. The managers > simply control the life cycle of worker processes and get their orders to > do > so from a data collecting and collating server with a management console. > This requires some kind of simple control protocol which can be written > using MINA. For the console I dream of a slick GWT interface where you > can > launch tests and control injector hosts. Oh the fun you can have with > statistics etc ... anyways back from dream land ... Ideally separate > managers reside in a set of load injecting machines and the system under > test resides on yet another. Likewise the console server can run on a > separate machine as well. The clients funnel data to the collating server > for jobs and are network applications that likewise can be written using > MINA. Regardless of the topology used this is the general model presented > by may performance testing frameworks like Grinder and SLAMD. > > The neat thing is some frameworks can even start running optimizations > where > parameters are varied to find optimal running conditions. I'd like to do > this too but perhaps also have an agent in the tested application as a > Filter probably to both monitor and influence the application. This makes > the server more of a white box than a black box undergoing testing from > the > outside. It could for example vary standard MINA server parameters to > find > optimal settings while monitoring server process information like memory > and > thread usage etc. There are many possibilities here. We could even use > Genetic Algorithms and Optimization Algorithms to control and influence > the > optimization process - ok getting carried away. For starters of course > this > feature may not be present :D. However the idea is the student can take > this as far as they like. > > The bottom line is this is a great project for a student interested in > using > MINA to tune MINA while getting their feet wet and involved in this > community. MINA users will now have a framework they can use and > hopefully > contribute back to. Everyone is happy. > > Thoughts? > > Anyone interested in mentoring or taking on this project as a student in > GSoC? > > Thanks, > Alex >
