Show HN: Beeswithmachineguns, lets you use EC2 to DDOS yourself

There's also Locust, a Python powered load testing tool similar to this. It's focused on simulating user behavior rather than hitting specific URLs. This allows for much more true-to-life testing.

We used it to load test Battlelog (the online service for Battlefield 3) and successfully simulated over 2 million concurrent users hitting the service using EC2. See http://locust.io for more info. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors)

This was used in a AWS demo in re:invent or something like that I recall.

I also recall being extremely impressed (you know, the whole.... autoscaling!!!! thing) and thought it was an internal Amazon product.

I like to use http://blitz.io for load testing.

I have used this for load testing before, unfortunately the project is in need of a maintainer, I don't know python, but from the github page:

"ATTENTION: This project has several open pull requests and is in need of a maintainer! If you have experience with EC2, Python and load testing tools and would be interested in taking it over, please open a ticket telling us why and we’ll get back to you. Thanks!"

is anyone fancies it!

beeswithmachineguns is my mainstay, but siege is also a really good tool