Web servers are programs that enable a computer to present web pages on the Internet. During ‘Performance Testing Monitoring’ your web server(s) can be important to potentially uncover any bottlenecks. feel free to refer back to our previous article A High-Level Insight Into Performance Monitoring with regards to server monitoring. In the following article, we will explore the most common web servers to monitor. The diagram below shows the percentages of the top 4 web servers that are being used as of the 13th of July by W3Techs.com.
Apache (Apache HTTP Server) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. An Apache module called mod_status helps you to monitor web server load and current httpd connections with a HTML interface that can be accessed via a web browser. For more information on mod_status please refer to the following Link.
The main config file httpd.conf can be edited and a statistics page can be enabled by adding the following lines:
SetHandler server-status
Order Deny, Allow
Deny from all
Allow from example.com
You should now be able to access the server statistics page by going to the following URL: http://your.server.namel/server-status
LoadRunner has a built-in Apache monitor, alternatively, you can create a small script to read the page at regular intervals and log the values to a file. The most useful counters to monitor on Apache are as per the table below.
Nginx (pronounced Engine X) is a web server which can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. It is free and open-source and was released under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license. Click on the Link for installation instructions. The software was developed by Igor Sysoev and was released publicly in 2004. Many web servers use NGINX as a load balancer. In March 2019, the Nginx company was acquired by F5 Networks for $670 million. One tool that can be used to monitor Nginx is called Amplify.
Cloudflare can host static websites on a content delivery network (CDN), skipping the need for a traditional web hosting provider. Its use has grown considerably over the last few years in that it can also act as a reverse proxy in front of a webserver. Reverse proxies are typically implemented to help increase security, performance, and reliability. If you come across Cloudflare then it has its own health check analytics tool which can perform monitoring refer to Cloudflare Analytics and Cloudflare Monitoring Tools
The following definition of Microsoft IIS was taken from https://www.iis.net/
“Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS’s scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.”
You can use Perfmon (feel free to view our article on Monitoring Operating Systems) to retrieve the metrics on IIS. Some of the important counters are:
There are numerous types of web servers that you can monitor while performance testing to identify any bottlenecks.
To find out how SQA Consulting can assist you with your performance monitoring needs contact us.
