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stress-ng — System Stress Testing

Tool: stress-ng Status: Structure Ready

stress-ng performs CPU, memory, cache, and I/O stress testing for capacity planning and burn-in validation. It includes 370+ stressors and runs on Linux VMs via Ansible deployment.

Run This Test

Prerequisites

  • Linux VMs deployed on your Azure Local cluster
  • Ansible 2.14+ installed on your management workstation
  • SSH key-based access to Linux VMs
  • Framework prerequisites completed

Step 1 — Install stress-ng on target VMs

.\tools\stress-ng\scripts\Install-StressNg.ps1 `
    -ClusterName "hci01.corp.infiniteimprobability.com" `
    -Nodes @("hci01-node1", "hci01-node2")

Step 2 — Run a stress test

.\tools\stress-ng\scripts\Start-StressNgTest.ps1 `
    -ClusterName "hci01.corp.infiniteimprobability.com" `
    -Nodes @("hci01-node1", "hci01-node2") `
    -Profile "cpu-stress" `
    -DurationSeconds 600

Step 3 — Collect results

.\tools\stress-ng\scripts\Collect-StressNgResults.ps1 `
    -ClusterName "hci01.corp.infiniteimprobability.com" `
    -Nodes @("hci01-node1", "hci01-node2") `
    -RunId "<run-id-from-previous-step>"

When to Use stress-ng

Scenario stress-ng
CPU thermal and power validation :white_check_mark:
Memory stability under pressure :white_check_mark:
Burn-in testing of new cluster nodes :white_check_mark:
Determine maximum safe CPU utilization :white_check_mark:
Cache and TLB stress testing :white_check_mark:

Key Capabilities

  • 370+ stressors across CPU, memory, filesystem, network, and OS categories
  • YAML job files for reproducible configurations
  • Metrics — bogo ops/s, thermal zone readings, power measurement
  • Stressor classes for targeted testing (cpu, memory, io, network, etc.)
  • Verification mode for checking compute accuracy under load

What You Get

After a test completes, you will have:

  • Bogo ops/s (bogus operations per second) per stressor per node
  • Thermal readings if available on hardware
  • Aggregated metrics across all nodes
  • Reports in PDF, DOCX, and/or XLSX format

File Locations

Component Path
Scripts tools/stress-ng/scripts/
Workload Profiles tools/stress-ng/config/profiles/
Ansible Playbooks tools/stress-ng/playbooks/
Alert Rules tools/stress-ng/monitoring/alert-rules.yml
Report Templates tools/stress-ng/reports/templates/
Tests tools/stress-ng/tests/
Logs tools/stress-ng/logs/

Deep Dive

Topic Page
Ansible deployment details Installation
CPU, memory, and I/O profiles Workload Profiles
Alert rules during test runs Monitoring
Report formats and templates Reporting
Common errors and fixes Troubleshooting

Automate This Test

To run stress-ng on a schedule or as part of a CI/CD workflow, see CI/CD Pipelines. The pipeline calls the same scripts listed above.