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Home » Performance

Load-Testing HPC Linux Clusters with “stress”

Submitted by on April 28, 2011 – 8:43 pm 5 Comments

The “stress” is a simple-to-use load generator for POSIX systems that I found very useful for stress-testing HPC clusters. The current version of the application is 1.0.4 and it was easy to compile and install. Stress can create configurable system load for CPU, memory, I/O, and disks. In the example below we ran “stress” on a SLES 11 HPC cluster with HP CMU 4.2 installed. The stress test was initiated from the cluster head node on compute nodes 17-32. The pdsh parallel distributed shell was used, which is a part of the CMU package.

pdsh -w node[17-32] "stress --cpu 10 --io 1 --vm 1 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout 30 --verbose &"

Sample output:
node21: stress: info: [28683] successful run completed in 30s
node24: stress: dbug: [18191] <-- worker 18193 signalled normally
node24: stress: info: [18191] successful run completed in 30s
node18: stress: dbug: [25475] <-- worker 25477 signalled normally
node18: stress: info: [25475] successful run completed in 30s
node32: stress: dbug: [26079] <-- worker 26082 signalled normally
node22: stress: dbug: [20334] <-- worker 20336 signalled normally
node22: stress: info: [20334] successful run completed in 30s
node28: stress: dbug: [17769] <-- worker 17771 signalled normally
node28: stress: info: [17769] successful run completed in 30s
node25: stress: dbug: [25461] <-- worker 25463 signalled normally
node25: stress: info: [25461] successful run completed in 30s
node31: stress: dbug: [24784] <-- worker 24786 signalled normally
node31: stress: info: [24784] successful run completed in 30s
node29: stress: dbug: [17691] <-- worker 17693 signalled normally
node29: stress: info: [17691] successful run completed in 30s
node20: stress: dbug: [29817] <-- worker 29819 signalled normally
node20: stress: info: [29817] successful run completed in 30s
node30: stress: dbug: [20482] <-- worker 20484 signalled normally
node30: stress: info: [20482] successful run completed in 30s
node27: stress: dbug: [17349] <-- worker 17351 signalled normally
node27: stress: info: [17349] successful run completed in 30s
node23: stress: dbug: [17579] <-- worker 17581 signalled normally
node23: stress: info: [17579] successful run completed in 30s
node19: stress: dbug: [29982] <-- worker 29984 signalled normally
node19: stress: info: [29982] successful run completed in 30s
node32: stress: dbug: [26079] <-- worker 26081 signalled normally
node32: stress: info: [26079] successful run completed in 30s
node17: stress: dbug: [20308] <-- worker 20310 signalled normally
node17: stress: info: [20308] successful run completed in 30s

Here are the screenshots of the CMU GUI before and during the stress test:

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5 Comments »

  • whitesoxfan2347 says:

    I take 240mg of verapilmil to control pvcs. My stress test showed “non-diagnostic” st depression for heart disease. I can’t see the cardiologist for another 3 or 4 weeks. Should I be worried? I am healthy and have never had chest pain, shortness of breath, etc. I am waiting for echo results and holter results. Can someone help me relax about this? Thank you.

  • HASTHEANSWERS says:

    Hello I just had a stress test 2 days ago and they injected some nuclear tracer dye. I am wondering if it is safe to have sex after 2 days?

  • TommyKay says:

    I have looked and have a good idea of who most of the banks are under the stress test, but does anyone absolutely know numbers one through 19? Please list them if you know.

    Thank you in advance.

  • Brendan O says:

    I had a stress test done to me last Monday and I got tired.is that normal?

  • Kristian says:

    About 1 month ago I went for a stress test at a Specialist Centre. The doctor after examining the result of the stress test done, told me that the result is not good . He suggested that I go for an angiogram.

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