Load balancer test cluster emulator
Copyright 2009 Dormando (dormando@rydia.net)

Pre-CPAN release of some quick test cluster software I wrote for a talk at
Velocity 2009.

Dependencies:

Danga::Socket (though future releases might switch to AnyEvent)

To start
========

$ ./lbemu examples/ideal-test.yaml 
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5000
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5001
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5002
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5003
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5004
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5005
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5006
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5007
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5008
initialized "basic webserver" listener on 127.0.0.1:5009

Look in examples/ directory for a few examples.

HTTP parsing is _ultra_ simple. It supports an 'OPTIONS *' command, and a GET
vs any configured URL's. No other processing is done. Responses consist of 'x'
characters up to the requested response length.

It's pretty fast. Disabling the scheduling algorithm I can get over 10,000
requests/sec on my laptop. With the algo it's a lot lower but still pretty
good. A big point with this software is not to push a huge volume of requests
through it, however.

What lbemu is
=============

lbemu is a no-frills web cluster emulator. It allows you to create fake
webservers listening on many IPs or ports, which you can then configure into
your load balancer or proxy. It is useful in tuning paramters on your load
balancer and for comparing effectiveness of different load balancers, if you
are evaluating hardware/software solutions.

Lbemu contains a fake even-balanced CPU scheduler in order to emulate how much
*time* it takes to process a request.

- Specify a machine as having 1-n CPU's (lets say four)
- Specify each CPU as being able to process n 'ticks' per second (lets say
  5000)
- lbemu runs at 50 'frames' per second. This is tunable in the top of your
  sourcecode if you frequently lag on a loop.
- Requests are specified as having 0 or more ticks. a 0 tick doesn't enter the
  scheduler, it's immediately responded to. This is for requests like OPTIONS
  or a small static file.
- lbemu attempts to have a request process in that amount of time, per
  scheduled across the CPUs.

So if you have a request that takes 1000 ticks, with 4 cpus with a 5000 tick
capacity each, a single request against the server should complete in roughly
200 milliseconds.

If you issue 4 requests all at once, they should all return in roughly 200
milliseconds.

If you issue 8 requests all at once, they should all return in roughly 400
milliseconds. This is what sets lbemu aside as far as lightweight server
emulation goes; it's not simply taking a request and returning a response
after N amount of time. Based on the requests presently being processed,
finished, running in parallel, requests will fluctuate and slow down at least
somewhat similar to a real web cluster.

You can also specify the equivalent of an apache MaxClients, which allows you
to properly test perlbal or similar load balancer.

The real *power* of this software comes in its ability to quickly define
various cluster scenarios. If you look through the examples/ directory, you'll
find a very quick way of testing ideal conditions, and any mix of servers you
can come up with. Fast/slow servers, servers which handle different requests.
See how your load balancing setup handles having a few broken tarpitting
machines. Or if you can really roll out those new ultra-fast webservers along
with your old, slow ones.

It doesn't have anything in the way of collecting server side statistics.
Could certainly be added in the future.

If you think this stuff is useful, have a patch or idea, or want to say
thanks or how much you hate me, feel free to shoot me an e-mail :) If there's
interest, or if I continue to use the software, I'll continue to make
releases.

- Dormando (dormando@rydia.net)