HP 5992-4859 User Manual

HP OSMS: Tomcat Sizing Guide for HP ProLiant c-Class Blade Servers

HP Part Number: 5992-4859
Published: May 2008
Edition: 1.0

© Copyright 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

Legal Notice

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shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Acknowledgments

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RED HAT READY Logo and RED HAT CERTIFIED PARTNER Logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc.

Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................9

Executive Summary...........................................................................................................................9

Intended Audience............................................................................................................................9

Scope and Purpose............................................................................................................................9

HP Services........................................................................................................................................9

Typographic Conventions...............................................................................................................11

Publishing History...........................................................................................................................11

HP Encourages Your Comments.....................................................................................................11

Hardware Test Environment................................................................................................................12

Tomcat Installation................................................................................................................................12

Tomcat Configuration...........................................................................................................................13

Setting JVM Options for Tomcat......................................................................................................13

Setting Tomcat Connector Attributes..............................................................................................14

Static Web Page Benchmark..................................................................................................................14

Benchmark Software........................................................................................................................14

Benchmark Results..........................................................................................................................15

HP Proliant BL460c Server.........................................................................................................15

HP Proliant BL465c Server.........................................................................................................16

HP Proliant BL480c Server.........................................................................................................17

Application Scenario Benchmark.........................................................................................................18

JMeter Installation and Configuration............................................................................................19

JPetStore Installation and Configuration.........................................................................................19

Application Scenario Configuration................................................................................................21

Running the Scenario.......................................................................................................................21

Benchmark Results..........................................................................................................................22

Summary...............................................................................................................................................23

Resources..............................................................................................................................................24

Table of Contents 3

4

List of Figures

1 Tomcat Successful Installation Verification...................................................................................13

2 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server - Requests per Second............16

3 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server - Average Response Time.......16

4 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server - Requests per Second............17

5 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server - Average Response Time.......17

6 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server - Requests per Second............18

7 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server - Average Response Time.......18

8 Application Scenario Test Environment Architecture..................................................................20

9 Typical JMeter Test Plan................................................................................................................21

10 JMeter Summary Report................................................................................................................22

11 JMeter Application Scenario Test Results – Requests per Second................................................23

12 JMeter Application Scenario Test Results – Response Time.........................................................23

5

6

List of Tables

1 Test Hardware Environment.........................................................................................................12

2 JVM Configuration .......................................................................................................................13

3 Tomcat Configuration....................................................................................................................14

4 Main ab Options............................................................................................................................14

5 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server.................................................15

6 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server.................................................16

7 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server.................................................18

8 JMeter Application Test Results....................................................................................................22

7

8

Introduction

HP Open Source Middleware Stacks (OSMS) offer building block applications, such as the Web
Server; technical blueprints, and documents such as this Tomcat Sizing Guide which describes
the maximum workload that HP ProLiant c-Class Blade Servers are capable of supporting; and
consulting services to speed the successful implementation of an open source strategy.

Executive Summary

The HP Open Source Integrated Portfolio (HP OSIP) comprises a range of products and services
designed to verify that customers can successfully realize the cost and feature benefits of adopting
open source software in their IT environments. HP Open Source foundation components include
the base components of an open source-based ecosystem. HP servers and storage are validated
to run the Linux operating system together with the supported commercial Linux distribution.

The results published in this document were achieved using the Apache benchmarking tool and
Apche JMeter for each of the HP ProLiant c-Class Blade Servers. Various test configurations and
test environments were used and documented to provide readers an opportunity to understand
the testing methodology.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this document is anyone who is interested in determining the Tomcat
user connection workload that can be supported on a given HP ProLiant c-Class Blade Server
and details for deploying a hardware environment based on the Tomcat environment requirements
of certain applications.

Scope and Purpose

This document presents the results of a series of benchmark tests performed using the Apache
Benchmarking tool and Apache JMeter. The tests were conducted running a Tomcat application
server to evaluate system performance when running a web application under a heavy load. The
following HP ProLiant servers were used in this test: BL460c, BL480c, and BL465c. The benchmark
data provided in this sizing guide can assist customers in determining which HP Proliant c-Class
Blade Server meets their Tomcat server requirements along with how-to information for
configuring the HP Proliant c-Class Blade Server and storage in a specific production environment.

HP provides quality assurance from extensive integration testing with open source software and
HP hardware so that you can confidently deploy the complete stack. Once you have completed
a successful evaluation, you have the flexibility to “do it yourself” or get assistance from HP to
incorporate open source stacks into your existing IT infrastructure.

HP Services

HP Open Source Consulting Services can help you build and integrate open source and commercial
software across multiple operating system (OS) environments. Additionally, HP Open Source
Support Services provide industry leading technical support for all the products HP sells,
including hardware, operating systems, and open source middleware.

To learn more about HP Open Source Consulting and Support Services, contact your local HP
sales representative or visit the HP Business and IT Services website at:

http://www.hp.com/hps

For the location of the nearest sales office, call:

• In the United States: [phone]

• In Canada: [phone]

• In Japan: [phone]

• In Latin America: [phone]

Introduction 9

• In Australia/New Zealand: [phone]

• In Asia Pacific: [phone]

• In Europe/Africa/Middle East: [phone]

10

Typographic Conventions

This document uses the following typographic conventions.

Command
ComputerOut

Ctrl-x A key sequence. A sequence such as Ctrl-x indicates that

ENVIRONVAR The name of an environment variable, for example, PATH.
[ERRORNAME]

Key The name of a keyboard key. Return and Enter both refer

Term The defined use of an important word or phrase.

UserInput

VARIABLE

\ (continuation character)

... The preceding element can be repeated an arbitrary number

| Separates items in a list of choices.

A command name or qualified command phrase.
Text displayed by the computer.

you must hold down the key labeled Ctrl while you press
another key or button.

The name of an error, usually returned in the errno
variable.

to the same key.

Commands and other text that you type.
The name of a placeholder in a command, function, or

other syntax display that you replace with an actual value.
A backslash (\) at the end of a line of code (such as a

command) indicates that the following line of code is
contiguous, and you must not insert a line break. This
convention facilitates the typesetting of long lines of code
examples on a printed page. If you cut and paste sample
code from this publication, ensure that you remove
backslash characters at line endings.

of times.

Publishing History

The document publishing date and part number indicate the current edition of the document.
The publishing date changes when a new edition is printed. Minor changes might be made
without changing the publishing date. The document part number changes only when extensive
changes are made. Document updates might be issued between editions to correct errors or
document product changes. For the latest version of this document online, see the HP Technical
Documentation website at:

http://www.docs.hp.com

Supported OSManufacturing Part

Number

5992-4859

(RHEL5ASu1)

HP Encourages Your Comments

HP encourages your comments concerning this document. We are committed to providing
documentation that meets your needs. Send any errors found, suggestions for improvement, or
compliments to:

[e-mail]

Include the document title, manufacturing part number, and any comment, error found, or
suggestion for improvement you have concerning this document.

Publication DateEdition

Number

May 20081Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 AS Update 1

Introduction 11

Hardware Test Environment

This benchmark was performed within an HP BladeSystem c-Class blade enclosure with enhanced
backplane using C-GbE2 Network interconnect switches. Table 1 lists the specifications of the
hardware test environment.

Table 1 Test Hardware Environment

BL480cBL465cBL460cHardware

CPU

Disk Storage

File System
Partitioning

Operating System

During the test, the server and configuration that were used as the client where ab and JMeter
were run is as follows:

Machine Model: HP ProLiant BL460c
CPU: (1)Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor X5160
(3.0GHz/4MB L2 cache per core)
Memory: 2GB
OS: RHEL5 AS u1

Tomcat Installation

(2) Quad-Core Intel® Xeon®
processor X5365 (3.0
GHz/4MB L2 cache per core)

16GB (8x2GB PC2-5300 DDR2)Memory

2 x 73GB SAS Smart Array
E200i controller with Battery
Backed Write Cache (BBWC)

(ext3 – no LVM):
Disk0: /, /boot, swap

RHEL5 AS u1 SMP kernel
(2.6.18-53.el5) with errata
updates

(2) Dual-Core AMD
Opteron™ processor 2218 (2.6
GHz/1MB L2 cache per core)

14GB (6x2GB+ 2x1GB
PC2-5300 DDR2)

2 x 73GB SAS Smart Array
E200i controller with Battery
Backed Write Cache (BBWC)

(ext3 – no LVM):
Disk0: /, /boot, swap

RHEL5 AS u1 SMP kernel
(2.6.18-53.el5) with errata
updates

(2) Quad-Core Intel® Xeon®
processor X5365 (3.0
GHz/4MB L2 cache per core)

24GB (12x2GB PC2-5300
DDR2)

4 x 73GB SAS Smart Array
P400i controller with Battery
Backed Write Cache (BBWC)

(ext3 – no LVM):
Disk0: /, /boot, swap

RHEL5 AS u1 SMP kernel
(2.6.18-53.el5) with errata
updates

The Tomcat software is available on the Apache Software Foundation website. The file to
download for Linux servers is apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz file. The following provides
the steps for installing and configuring Tomcat.

NOTE: Prior to installing Apache Tomcat, please verify that JDK is installed and configured
on the system.

1. Unzip the *.gz file to the dictionary where you want to install tomcat.

In the example that follows, the directory used is /usr/local/apache-tomcat.

2. To start Tomcat, enter the command:

# /usr/local/apache-tomcat/bin/startup.sh

The following messages display:

Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/local/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/local/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/apache-tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/local/jdk

3. Verify the Tomcat installation by launching a browser and navigating to the following URL:

http://<YOUR_TOMCAT_SERVER_IP>:8080/

The Tomcat web page displays as shown in Figure 1.

12

Figure 1 Tomcat Successful Installation Verification

NOTE: If the iptables firewall is enabled in the system, the Tomcat server can not be

accessed from other machines.

4. If necessary, stop Tomcat by entering the following command:

# /usr/local/apache-tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

The following messages display:

Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/local/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/local/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/apache-tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/local/jdk

Tomcat Configuration

Setting JVM Options for Tomcat

Edit the /usr/local/apache-tomcat/bin/catalina.sh file and add the JVM options to
the JAVA_OPTS environment variable. Table 2 lists the JVM options that need to be added to the
catalina.sh configuration file.

Table 2 JVM Configuration

DescriptionValueJVM Option

The maximum Java heap size.4g-Xmx

The initial Java heap size.4g-Xms

The size of young generation.1g-Xmn

To use parallel garbage collection for scavenges.–-XX:+UseParallelGC

The initial size of permanent generation.50m-XX:PermSize

Tomcat Configuration 13

Setting Tomcat Connector Attributes

Edit the /usr/local/apache-tomcat/conf/server.xml file and add the attributes listed
in Table 3 to the Connector element. The following example shows the element in the xml file
after the connector attributes are added.

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
maxThreads="3000" acceptCount="200" ...

Table 3 Tomcat Configuration

DescriptionValueAttribute

3000maxThreads

2000acceptCount

500minSpareThreads

2000maxSpareThreads

falseenableLookups

Static Web Page Benchmark

This section provides information on running static web page benchmark on BL460c, BL480c
and BL465c servers. The Apache Benchmarking tool was used on web pages of different sizes
to generate two types of data: 1) the number of requests (recorded per second) and 2) the response
time (recorded in milliseconds). A basic analysis of these results is also included with this data
to assist you in understanding the benchmark results.

The maximum number of request processing threads to be created by this
connector, which therefore determines the maximum number of simultaneous
requests that can be handled. If not specified, the default value for this attribute
is 40. If an executor is associated with this connector, this attribute is ignored
and the connector executes tasks using the executor rather than an internal
thread pool.

The maximum queue length for incoming connection requests when all
possible request processing threads are in use. Any requests received when
the queue is full are refused. The default value is 10.

The number of request processing threads that are created when this connector
is first started. The connector also verifies that it has the specified number of
idle processing threads available. This attribute should be set to a value smaller
than that set for maxThreads. The default value is 4.

The maximum number of unused request processing threads that are allowed
to exist until the thread pool starts stopping the unnecessary threads. The
default value is 50.

Set to “true” if you want calls to request.getRemoteHost() to perform DNS
lookups in order to return the actual host name of the remote client. Set to
“false” to skip the DNS lookup and return the IP address in String form instead
(thereby improving performance). By default, DNS lookups are enabled.

Benchmark Software

The Apache HTTP Benchmarking Tool is a command line (ab) benchmarking tool that is bundled
with the standard Apache package to benchmark Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Web
servers. It is a free and open source software that is distributed under the Apache license. It can
simulate large numbers of connections to perform a series of requests against given pages in
applications on the HTTP web server. The tool then provides performance statistics, in particular
data about the number of requests per second which the server is capable of serving and the
average response time for all requests.

Table 4 Main ab Options

Main ab
Option

Varies from 100 to 2500.-c

-n
concurrent connections.

14

DescriptionValue

Number of multiple requests to perform at one time, such as
concurrent connections.

Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session100 times the number of

For more information about ab, see the following web site:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html

Benchmark Results

In the static web page testing, several web pages were used with different sizes that varied from
5KB to 200KB. For each web page, ab was run with a varying number of concurrent connections
and total requests to determine the maximum requests per second and the maximum response
time for 80% of the fastest requests. For this test, the concurrent connections varied in number
from 100 to 2500 and the total number of requests was set to 100 times the number of concurrent
connections.

The benchmark results for the testing are presented in the following sections and show the
maximum number of requests per second and maximum response time for 80% of the fastest
requests that each system can handle, depending on the number of concurrent connections and
the size of pages.

The following tables show that, with regard to requests per second, having more connections
can negatively impact the value for small size pages like the 5KB page but have little influence
for bigger size pages. In regard to response time, when the number of concurrent connections is
larger, so is the response time. For relatively small pages such as a 5KB size page, both the HP
ProLiant BL460c and BL480c servers, configured with 2 Quad-Core processors, can handle more
than 10,000 requests per second even with 2500 concurrent connections. However, the HP ProLiant
BL465c server, configured with 2 Dual-Core Opteron processors, can process fewer requests. For
pages over 30KB, the number of requests that all three servers can handle per second is stable
and does not vary as user connections are increased.

HP Proliant BL460c Server

The HP ProLiant BL460c server has features that are equal to standard 1U rack-mount servers.
The two-processor, dual-core or quad-core ProLiant BL460c combines power-efficient compute
power, and high density with expanded memory and I/O for maximum performance. The
ProLiant c7000 enclosure supports up to 16 BL460c server blades, two more servers than the IBM
BladeCenter, and each BL460c supports double the memory capacity of the HS21 server without
an expansion blade. The Proliant BL460c now comes with dual-core and quad-core Intel® Xeon®
processors, DDR2 fully buffered DIMMs, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA (SATA), hard
drives, and support of multi-function NICs and multiple I/O cards. The BL460c provides a
performance system ideal for the full range of scale-out applications. In this small form factor,
the BL460c includes more features to enable high-availability, such as hot plug hard drives,
mirrored memory, online spare memory, memory interleaving, embedded RAID capability, and
enhanced remote Lights-Out management. Table 5 provides the benchmark results that were
obtained using a ProLiant BL460c server configured with two Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processors
running at 3.0GHz.

Table 5 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server

200K80K30K5KUser Connections

resp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/sec

189572.57761426.88263769.51618886.63100

328572.961151427.35513770.53917643.76200

1448572.504671425.38643773.201017230.17500

3008571.3110331424.563213766.081215180.411000

4139570.1416221423.593373772.206914174.951500

5217569.1621391421.595453731.9812312617.912000

Static Web Page Benchmark 15

Figure 2 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server - Requests per Second

Figure 3 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL460c Server - Average Response Time

HP Proliant BL465c Server

The HP ProLiant BL465c server is a two-way server blade designed for maximum compute
density and power efficiencies. The small form factor accommodates two blades in each slot
allowing for 16 servers in a standard 6u enclosure. Each CPU is a 95 Watt version of the Dual-Core
AMD Opteron 2000 series processor, which gives the equivalent of four processing units per
server. Up to 32GB of PC2-5300 DIMMs running at 667MHz is supported. Internal storage consists
of two small form factor disk drives, either SAS or SATA attached to the integrated Smart Array
E200i RAID controller with 64MB cache supporting RAID 0, 1. An optional StorageWorks SB40c
storage blade provides connectivity to additional storage, supporting RAID 5, and ADG. The
benchmark results in Table 6 were obtained with a ProLiant BL465c server configured with two
Dual-Core Opteron processors running at 2.6 GHz.

Table 6 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server

200K80K30K5KUser Connections

resp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/sec

185572.85731425.04263762.61129482.27100

329572.621151426.18523767.93129280.24200

1348572.302681414.36633773.08128297.94500

2959567.196241409.571203753.01148185.661000

16

Table 6 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server (continued)

200K80K30K5KUser Connections

resp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/sec

4101564.2914661405.941223721.44216958.181500

4849564.6715541370.033623680.87225993.032000

Figure 4 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server - Requests per Second

Figure 5 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL465c Server - Average Response Time

HP Proliant BL480c Server

The HP ProLiant BL480c server is a 2-way server blade designed for maximum performance and
scalability. The ProLiant BL480c server can support two Quad-Core Inter Xeon processors, which
gives the equivalent of eight processing units per server. Up to 48GB (PC2-5300 DDR2, 667 MHz)
of memory is supported. Each full-height blade has a Smart Array P400i Controller that supports
four hot-swap SCSI disks in a RAID configuration. An optional dual-port Fiber Channel adapter
provides connectivity to HP and third-party storage area networks (SANs). The benchmark
results in Table 7 were obtained with a BL480c server configured with two Quad-Core Inter Xeon
processors running at 3.0 GHz.

Static Web Page Benchmark 17

Table 7 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server

200K80K30K5KUser Connections

resp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/secresp timereq/sec

187572.69761426.77263770.73519446.04100

333572.841151426.88543768.29818313.09200

1417572.374611425.07653768.881016814.04500

3011570.9010101425.523203766.762015649.881000

4108564.4616161424.003393768.505614162.791500

4832568.9222231416.065513768.7011713810.742000

6146567.7827341412.645813718.9813013519.092500

Figure 6 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server - Requests per Second

Figure 7 Static Web Page Test Results for the HP ProLiant BL480c Server - Average Response Time

Application Scenario Benchmark

To evaluate the performance of a Tomcat application server, apart from benchmark testing on
single pages, the scenario testing to simulate operations on an application in the real world is
another important approach to obtain the maximum number of concurrent users a Tomcat server
can support in the case of the system response time being met.

18

JPetStore was used as the test application deployed on the Tomcat Application server. This
section provides a detailed description of the test scenario for JPetStore and, how to run Apache
JMeter against the test application. The benchmark data includes the number of requests the
Tomcat Application server can process per second and the average response time for all requests
on each ProLiant Blade server.

JMeter Installation and Configuration

Apache JMeter is an open source Java desktop application. It is designed to load test functional
behavior and can be used to measure performance on static and dynamic resources like Servlets,
Perl scripts, Java Objects, and so on. It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a Tomcat server
to test its capabilities, and can also make a graphical analysis of performance under concurrent
load. JMeter version 2.3.1 is used in the following tests. For more information, visit the JMeter
site located at:

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

The steps for installing and configuring JMeter are as follows:

1. Verify the computing environment meets the JMeter test requirements.

JMeter requires a fully compliant JVM 1.4 or later. JMeter Version 2.2 and later no longer
support Java 1.3. Make sure you have the correct version of JRE/JDK installed and set the
JAVA_HOME environment variable.

2. Download the latest JMeter version from the website and unzip the file to the directory
where you want to install JMeter.

3. To run JMeter in GUI mode, run the jmeter file in the JMETER_HOME/bin/ directory.

NOTE: You can edit the JMETER_HOME/bin/jmeter file to modify the JMeter parameters
or Java Virtual Machine (VM) options. For example, to create the memory consumed by
JMeter from the default 256MB to 3GB, you can set the following line in the JMeter file:

HEAP="-Xms3g -Xmx3g -Xmn1g"

For more detailed information, see the JMeter documentation located at:

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/usermanual/index.html

JPetStore Installation and Configuration

JPetStore is a sample application based on the Struts and iBATIS framework. It is a completely
rewritten Pet Store application based on Sun’s original J2EE Pet Store. For more information on
iBATIS and JPetStore, see:

http://ibatis.apache.org/javadownloads.cgi

JPetStore can be deployed in Tomcat and other Java web servers. It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL
and other databases. In this document, MySQL is used as the database for JPetStore. Figure 8
displays the architecture of the test environment.

Application Scenario Benchmark 19

Figure 8 Application Scenario Test Environment Architecture

Before performing the JPetStore installation on the Web server, verify that the following
installations and configurations have been completed.

• Tomcat has been installed on the Tomcat server node and configured correctly.

• MySQL has been installed and configured on the MySQL server node. Make sure that MySQL
is running correctly.

• Download the MySQL JDBC Driver file, mysql-connector-java-5.0.4-bin.jar.
Copy the file to TOMCAT_HOME/lib directory.

Perform the following steps to install and configure JPetStore.

1. Download the latest version of JPetStore from the iTBATIS website.

2. Unzip the file JPetStore-5.0.zip to the appropriate directory.

In the JPetStore-5.0/src/ddl/mysql directory, locate the following files:

• jpetstore-mysql-schema.sql

• jpetstore-mysql-create-user.sql

• jpetstore-mysql-dataload.sql

3. On the MySQL node, run the following commands:

mysql -uroot -p < jpetstore-mysql-schema.sql

mysql -uroot -p < jpetstore-mysql-dataload.sql

mysql -uroot -p < jpetstore-mysql-create-user.sql

4. Copy JPetStore-5.0/build/wars/jpetstore.war file to the folder
TOMCAT_HOME/webapps.

Tomcat automatically deploys the JPetStore application if it is running.

5. Edit the file
webapps/jpetstore/WEB-INF/classes/properties/database.properties and
change the default values to the corresponding configurations in the environment:

Driver=org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver
Url=jdbc:mysql://<YOUR_MYSQL_SERVER>:3306/JPETSTORE
Username=jpetstore
Password=ibatis9977

20

Application Scenario Configuration

A JMeter test plan must be created to simulate the requests sent to the server in the scenario.
There are two approaches which are generally used to create a test plan: JMeter’s Proxy and
Badboy. For JMeter, see the JMeter Reference Manual located at:

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/usermanual/index.html

For JMeter's Proxy and recording tests, see the JMeter tutorial located at:

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/usermanual/jmeter_proxy_step_by_step.pdf

For Badboy, see the Badboy website located at:

http://www.badboy.com.au/

To simulate a customer’s shopping behavior, a scenario is created according to the following
typical visiting steps:

1. Visit the index page, and then perform a login action.

2. Look through a kind of fish, and add it to the cart

3. Perform a search action, select a kind of goods from the search result and add it to the cart.

4. Switch to the cart page, and update the goods number to the correct number.

5. Check out and then logout.

Figure 9 displays a JMeter test plan that was created in accordance with the previously described

scenario.

Figure 9 Typical JMeter Test Plan

Running the Scenario

Select the Thread Group element in the JMeter tree and increase the Number of Threads (users)
from the default value to the value you want to test. Next, enter a value in the Loop Count field.
For instance, if the thread number is 1000, and the loop count is 100, then JMeter creates 1000
users at the same time and each user repeatedly runs the test plan 100 times. Before starting the
test, select Summar y Report in the tree. While the test is running, you can watch the statistics
from the page until the end of the test. At the end of the test, a Summary Report is generated,
similar to the example shown in Figure 10.

Application Scenario Benchmark 21

Figure 10 JMeter Summary Report

Benchmark Results

Table 8 shows the requests per second and average response time of the scenario described in

the previous section. The response time is defined as the time it takes the Tomcat server to send
the object of an HTTP request back to the client. The requests per second is the average request
number Tomcat is capable of handling (per second) in the particular scenario.

Table 8 JMeter Application Test Results

requests/sec

(min/sec)

BL480cBL465cBL460cUser Connections

requests/secresponse time

(min/sec)

requests/secresponsetime

response
time
(min/sec)

611593.5831166.8581677.7100

1141730.41701162.11121763.6200

2891717.44331147.32861733.4500

5941664.08841123.95771721.01000

9091613.513561083.69021631.01500

12301575.617571110.611921619.52000

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Figure 11 JMeter Application Scenario Test Results – Requests per Second

Figure 12 JMeter Application Scenario Test Results – Response Time

Summary

The performance of the Tomcat Application server is impacted by several factors such as network
throughput, system processing capability, concurrent user connections, and so on. The data
shown in this document were obtained under the precondition that network throughput was
stable. However, it is not generally the case that all users are simultaneously requesting service
from the application server. Among the different applications, the ratio of concurrent users to
total users of a certain application is different, but usually varies between 10% and 30%. Another
difference is the interval between requests of each user. The longer the interval is, the more users
the Tomcat server can serve. In the benchmark testing described in this document, the interval
between requests of each user was not considered. Therefore, for applications in the real world,
the number of concurrent user connections that the Tomcat Application server can process on
these three-blade servers may be much greater than shown in the document. When there are
millions of concurrent user connections, the Tomcat cluster and load-balancing technology can
be considered to scale out the Tomcat environment based on HP ProLiant c-Class Blade servers.

Summary 23

Resources

For additional information on the hardware and software used in the Tomcat tests, see the
following websites:

HP Open Source Middleware Stacks (OSMS)

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/321150-0-0-0-121.html

HP BladeSystem

http://www.hp.com/go/bladesystem/

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/bladeservers.html

Apache Tomcat

http://tomcat.apache.org/index.html

Apache JMeter

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

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