How to do a “performance-test” for a Dedicated-Server/CDN-Providers?

Question

It would be very kind if you can explain me in brief what are the steps necessary to do a "performance Test" for a Root/Dedicated-Server or a CDN provider?

What tools (maybe someone knows this by seeing the stats) did Ryan use to do his test: http://blog.ryankearney.com/2009/12/comparing-cdn-performance-part-2/comment-page-1/#comments

What are the "Key Peformance Indicators (KPI)" I should take into consideration and meassure:

• Response Time (Latency??)
• Troughput
• What else?

What are the best and easiest tools to meassure these KPIs?

=>The motivation for my question is, I have to choose a CDN/Dedicated-Server-Provider and one of my absolute favourite companies does not have a Datacenter in the country I live but in a neighbour country. And I want and have to compare the impact this has on the "network-performance" to see if they are nevertheless "as fast and as good" as the providers in my own country.

Thank you very much!!! Jan

Answer 1

For a performance comparison you're on the right track. You'll want to determine the response time under average and peak loads. If you are interested in the comparison between a dedicated and a global CDN you'll need to setup 'virtual users' in various geographical locations and use these throughout all of your tests.

If you already have an outcome in mind, it might be easier to just look non-performance related factors to convince yourself either way... price, availability, service terms/conditions.

The screenshots in the blog you reference look like Pingdom. It gets a mention in the comments.

Lastly, it might be worth pointing out that the key attribute of a CDN is that they serve content from multiple, geographically dispersed locations. So your desire to compare between a local data-center and one that resides in a neighbouring country is a bit curious.