HL7/MLLP load testing with locust

This project aims to showcase a small proof of concept on how to load test an HL7 server using locust.

HL7 mock server

In order to test this on your local, there's a dummy tcp server within the repo that is mocking an HL7 server.

Note that it will always answer with the same message. That's why it's dummy.

In order to start the server, run the following command:

python mockHL7server.py

This will start the mock server in port 13370.

Running locally

Also within the project you can find a locustfile.py. This file contains the proof of concept.

It will send the same message over and over and expect an ACK from the HL7 server.

In order to run locust, standing on the project's root folder, you should run the following command in a bash console :

locust

Note that you need to have python and locust installed in your computer first.

This will start a server in localhost:8089 that will allow you to load test the target hl7 server.

After some time, you should get some stats like this one:

Distributed load testing using docker

The repo already contains a docker-compose.yml file with the needed instructions to run the tests in a containerized environment.

In order to do so, you need to run the following command:

docker-compose up --scale worker=4

This will start the master, spawn 4 workers and start the distributed load testing

Check the master.conf file in order to change any of the test case parameters.