Testing Pre-Production Servers Accurately?

An anonymous reader asks: "Having been granted a 90-day demo enclosure of new blade servers from a major vendor the question I find myself asking is: On a limited budget, how does one simulate 1000+ attached clients and the activity of those clients? We're a K-12 school district and our current servers don't keep up with all the roaming-profile abuse from our Windows workstations. Are there tools or tricks available to simulate load on Netware/Linux servers? The user groups around here usually answer this question with 'Get some workstations for a test lab!', there's got to be a less expensive option, right? Can we leverage our existing client populous to achieve our goal, without interrupting or changing the quality of service at the desktop, substantially?"

Comments

Absolutely!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Store some MP3's and some porn, especially mpegs, on it and then connect it to the network. You don't even need to announce it but, within hours every workstation on your network will be hitting the servers and if it fails or is removed at a later date, no one will have the nerve to complain.

Obvious solution?

[crimethinker]

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned the obvious solution: set up a webserver and post the link to slashdot. References to Natalie Portman, hot grits, and torrents of a leaked telecine rip of Episode III should help.

-paul