A utility for arming (creating) many bees (micro EC2 in stances) to attack (load test) targets (web applications).

• Python 2.6
• boto
• paramiko

% easy_install beeswithmachineguns

% pip install beeswithmachineguns

% git clone git://github.com/newsapps/beeswithmachineguns.git
% cd beeswithmachineguns
% mkvirtualenv --no-site-packages bees
% easy_install pip
% pip install -r requirements.txt

Bees uses boto to communicate with EC2 and thus supports all the methods of vstoring credentials that it does. These include: declaring environment variables, machine-global configuration files, and per-user configuration files. You can read more about these options on boto’s configuration page

A type bees session looks something like this:

bees up -s 4 -g public -k frakkingtoasters
bees attack -n 10000 -c 250 -u http://www.ournewwebbyhotness.com/
bees down

This spins up 4 servers in security group ‘public’ using the EC2 key ‘frakkingtoasters’, which is expected to reside in ~/.ssh/.

It then uses those 4 servers to send 10,000 requests, 250 at a time, to attack OurNewWebbyHotness.com.

Lastly, it spins down the 4 servers. Please remember to do this—we aren’t responsible for your EC2 bills.

For complete options type:

bees -h

Please log your bugs on the Github issues tracker

The bees are a creation of the News Applications team at the Chicago Tribune—visit our blog and read our original post about the project

Initial refactoring code and inspiration from Jeff Larson

MIT.