Sword: Scalable and flexible workload generator for distributed data processing systems

Workload generation is commonly employed for performance characterization, testing and benchmarking of computer systems and networks. Workload generation typically aims at simulating or emulating traffic generated by different types of applications, protocols and activities, such as web browsing, email, chat, as well as stream multimedia traffic. We present a Scalable WORkloaD generator (SWORD) that we have developed for the testing and benchmarking of high-volume data processing systems. The tool is not only scalable but is also flexible and extensible allowing the generation of workload of a variety of types of applications and of contents. © 2006 IEEE.