Monitoring Server Performance through Firewalls now easier with Proxy Tunnels in Load Tester 5.4
So you’re getting setup to run your next test. You’ve installed our server monitor agent on each server, and are ready to start collecting server data while the test is running. However, there’s a snag: your workstation is on a different network from the servers, and you’re not able to open up the firewall on the servers to forward traffic.
Enter Load Tester 5.4. Load Tester 5.4 supports connecting to server agents through a SOCKS proxy. This means that if you can get a SSH session open to even just one server behind the firewall, you can now monitor your servers.
- Start by getting a SSH client which supports tunneling. For our example, we’ll use PuTTY, but other clients may have similar support.
- Open PuTTY, and enter the hostname of the SSH server on the Session Tab
- Select Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels
- Enter a source port number (we’ve arbitrarily selected 5000).
- Make sure the Destination is set to “Dynamic“, and press “Add“.
- Press “Open”, and login as normal.
- Minimize, but do not close PuTTY
- Open Load Tester, and select the Servers View
- Press Add
- In the Hostname, enter the internal IP address of the server to monitor
- Select Advanced
- Select “Connect through SOCKS proxy”, and enter Hostname: “localhost”, Port: 5000 (the same port used in step #4).
- Press OK, and Load Tester will now connect to your server, using PuTTY as a tunnel, so you can receive live server performance data!
Note, however: care should be taken in considering which servers to use for SSH tunnels. For example, if the “tunnel” server should go down, or become saturated with bandwidth as a result of the test, any server agent connections will stop updating until the issue is corrected. However, you will still be able to collect the complete data from the servers after the test completes.
We hope this feature will make server monitoring easier for users in the future. If you have any difficulty or questions, or friendly support staff will be more than happy to answer your concerns!
Frank is an engineer for Web Performance. He is also an advocate for correct fire safety procedures whenever applying massive load to production test rigs.