2018-06-14

SQL Stress Test using OStress

Although not bundled with SQL Server, Microsoft provides a sql query stress tool, named OStress, comes with RML utilities package which is absolutely free of cost. OStress is a command line tool similar to SQLCMD utility, so database developers and administrators should find it's easy to pick up. You can download OStress in the RML Utilities package available here: Description of the Replay Markup Language (RML) Utilities for SQL Server. There are 32bit and 64bit versions, just download the right one for your server. Below are the steps to demonstrate how to use OStress to stress test your sql server:

1. Download the RML Utilities package as mentioned above.
2. Install the package, just tick term and condition check box and press next to install.
3. Open the RML Utilities Command Prompt, you can find it at:
    Start > All Programs > RML Utilities for SQL Server > RML Cmd Prompt.
4. Type "ostress" then press enter, which shows you all the usage options.
5. For example, you wanna stress test a stored procedure named uspTest1, with 25 user connections having concurrent execution of 50 iterations, and output the result log files into a directory. The command should be like this:
ostress -S.\DEV2014 -dStackOverflow2010 -E -n25 -r50 -q -Q"EXEC uspTest1" -oC:\Temp\OStressOutput
6. Then you can check the query.out log files inside the output directory.