This is a tool to quickly turn on some number of AWS micro instances and have them slam a webserver simultaneously. The micro's are effectively Siege cannons.
Siege is a flexible load testing tool. You can configure different payloads and frequencies and all kinds of good stuff. So the trick for microarmy is to get Siege on a bunch of computers quickly and coordinate the micro instances to work in parallel.
The micro instances are controlled via SSH in parallel thanks to Eventlet + Paramiko.
The micros report the statistics of their run back to the controlling script, which then aggregates this data into a CSV.
After running the test you can shut down all of your micros and quit micro army.
I gave a talk on Micro Army back in May of 2011. The slides are available here.
I recently tested deployment of 100 ec2 micros. On average I found I was able to turn configure 2 micros in about 58 seconds. I tried configuring 100 micros in parallel and found this only took 106 seconds. Slightly more, but negligibly so.
This is what it looks like to use microarmy.
$ ./command_center.py
microarmy> long_help
long_help: This.
status: Get info about current cannons
deploy: Deploys N cannons
setup: Runs the setup functions on each host
config: Allows a user to specify existing cannons
config_siege: Create siege config from specified dictionary
siege_urls: Specify list of URLS to test against
single_url: Only hit one url when firing off your next test
all_urls: Revert to using configured urls (turns off single_url)
fire: Asks for a url and then fires the cannons
mfire: Runs `fire` multiple times and aggregates totals
term: Terminate cannons
quit: Exit command center
microarmy> deploy
Deploying cannons... Done!
Hosts config: [(u'i-4c4ff03c', u'ec2-107-21-75-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-4e4ff03e', u'ec2-50-42-133-31.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]
microarmy> setup
Setting up cannons - time: 1317352247.23
Loading cannons... Done!
Siege config written, deploying to cannons
Configuring siege... Done!
Siege urls written, deploying to cannons
Configuring urls... Done!
Finished setup - time: 1317352305.56
Sending reboot message to cannons
microarmy> fire
target: http://brubeck.io
Results ]------------------
Num_Trans,Elapsed,Tran_Rate
3424,9.15,374.21
3424,9.17,373.39
microarmy> term
microarmy> quit
Typically you'd want to configure the siege config in your local_settings.py like so...
siege_config = {
'connection': 'close',
'concurrency': 5,
'internet': 'true'
}
If you wish to configure it dynamically...
microarmy> config_siege
Siege config detected in settings and will be automatically deployed with "setup"
Continue? (y/n) y
Enter siege config data: {'connection': 'close', 'concurrency': 5, 'benchmark': 'true'}
Siege config written, deploying to cannons
Configuring siege... Done!
All of the above will write a ~/.siegerc config on the cannon machines like so:
connection = close
benchmark = true
concurrency = 5
Typically you'd want to configure the urls for siege to hit in your local_settings.py like so:
siege_urls = [
'http://localhost/',
'http://localhost/test'
]
If you wish to configure them dynamically...
microarmy> siege_urls
Urls detected in settings and will be automatically deployed with "setup"
Continue? (y/n) y
Enter urls: ['http://localhost/', 'http://localhost/test/']
Urls written, deploying to cannons
Configuring urls... Done!
All of the above will write ~/urls.txt on the cannon machines like so:
http://localhost/
http://localhost/test/
You might want to hit one single url when firing off a test, to do so, don't configure any urls in your local_settings.py or...
microarmy> single_url
Bypassing configured urls
microarmy> fire
target: http://localhost/test_one/
To switch back to your configured urls...
microarmy> all_urls
Using configured urls
Sometimes you might forget that you deployed a whole mess of cannons already. In that case, run the following...
microarmy> find_cannons
Deployed cannons: [(u'i-1a6d127a', u'ec2-50-17-80-241.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-1c6d127c', u'ec2-184-73-117-126.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e06d1280', u'ec2-50-16-106-209.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e26d1282', u'ec2-50-17-26-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e46d1284', u'ec2-50-16-169-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e66d1286', u'ec2-184-73-114-245.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e86d1288', u'ec2-184-72-92-234.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ea6d128a', u'ec2-184-73-148-253.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ec6d128c', u'ec2-107-20-112-149.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ee6d128e', u'ec2-50-16-24-210.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f06d1290', u'ec2-204-236-251-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f46d1294', u'ec2-50-19-24-63.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f66d1296', u'ec2-107-20-95-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f86d1298', u'ec2-174-129-76-108.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-fa6d129a', u'ec2-50-16-64-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]
Would you like to import these cannons now? (y/n) y
Now you have a whole new battery of cannons to fire away. To be safe, you may want to run setup again.
Thanks to tagging instances in EC2, we can get an inventory of all the cannons we've deployed over time. That's good because you don't want to leave those little beasts running.
If you're all done and want to be sure your instances are terminated, do the following...
microarmy> find_cannons
Deployed cannons: [(u'i-1a6d127a', u'ec2-50-17-80-241.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-1c6d127c', u'ec2-184-73-117-126.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e06d1280', u'ec2-50-16-106-209.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e26d1282', u'ec2-50-17-26-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e46d1284', u'ec2-50-16-169-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e66d1286', u'ec2-184-73-114-245.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-e86d1288', u'ec2-184-72-92-234.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ea6d128a', u'ec2-184-73-148-253.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ec6d128c', u'ec2-107-20-112-149.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-ee6d128e', u'ec2-50-16-24-210.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f06d1290', u'ec2-204-236-251-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f46d1294', u'ec2-50-19-24-63.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f66d1296', u'ec2-107-20-95-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-f86d1298', u'ec2-174-129-76-108.compute-1.amazonaws.com'), (u'i-fa6d129a', u'ec2-50-16-64-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com')]
Would you like to import these cannons now? (y/n) y
microarmy> cleanup
Deployed cannons destroyed
There are only a few requirements. Everything required for the micros is installed on the micros, after all.
$ pip install eventlet paramiko boto pyyaml
You should create a local_settings.py inside the repo and fill in the
following keys. Look at settings.py for more information.
- aws_access_key
- aws_secret_key
- security_groups
- key_pair_name
- num_cannons
- ec2_ssh_key
Here is an example:
aws_access_key = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST'
aws_secret_key = 'abcdefghij/KLMNOPQRSTUVWXY/zabcdefghijkl'
security_groups = ['MicroArmy'] # must support incoming SSH + outgoing HTTP
key_pair_name = 'micros'
ec2_ssh_key = '/Users/jd/.ec2/micros.pem'
num_cannons = 2
siege_config = {
'connection': 'close',
'concurrency': 5,
'internet': 'true'
}
siege_urls = [
'http://localhost/',
'http://localhost/test'
]