A simple yet powerful Erlang application for generating configurable load patterns to test system performance.
Ponos is an Erlang application that provides a flexible load generator API for simulating configurable traffic patterns to test system performance. It allows developers to define load specifications that map time to intensity, supporting patterns like constant load, bursts, and sawtooth. The tool is designed to be lightweight and straightforward, requiring minimal configuration for effective performance benchmarking.
Erlang developers and performance engineers who need to simulate realistic load patterns for testing the scalability and resilience of distributed systems or services.
Developers choose Ponos for its simplicity, extensibility through task runners, and ability to generate precise load patterns with minimal overhead, making it a powerful yet easy-to-integrate solution for Erlang-based performance testing.
ponos is a simple yet powerful load generator written in erlang
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Supports constant, burst, staircase, and sawtooth patterns via configurable load specifications, allowing precise simulation of various traffic scenarios as outlined in the ponos_load_specs module.
Designed to be lightweight and straightforward, requiring only a name, task function, and load spec to start, with defaults for options like duration and concurrency limits.
Allows custom task execution and logging through implementable callbacks like ponos_default_task_runner and ponos_file_task_runner, enabling tailored integration for performance testing.
Offers options to limit maximum concurrent tasks and define task duration, providing controlled load generation to prevent system overload during benchmarks.
Practical sampling frequency is capped around 500 Hz due to Erlang VM timer behavior, which can delay ticks and reduce precision in high-frequency load simulations.
The load generator can become CPU limited on single cores, requiring multiple instances to leverage multi-core CPUs, as admitted in the README's note on performance limits.
Lacks advanced capabilities like distributed testing, real-time monitoring, or GUI, necessitating custom development for complex scenarios beyond basic load generation.