How to stress test a server

If I were going to set up a dedicated server, and wanted to stress test it - that is to see how many simultaneous connections it could handle based on connection profiles, what memory usage looks like under different loads, etc, where would I start?

I would like to profile:

o) Simple HTML GETs and PUTs
o) Server side includes
o) SSL transactions
o) PHP
o) PHP with MySQL
o) Perl
o) Perl with MySQL
o) High bandwidth (MP3 access?)
o) Streaming audio/video (Real? Quicktime?)
o) Other?

Are there any services that offer this kind of server characterization? Is there any interest in this kind of characterization if it were offered as a service? Any data available on existing configurations that would serve as a guide?

Thanks,

-t

 

 

 

 

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