I propose a change to the FAQ and closing policy:

I'd like to see all of the benchmarking questions closed with prejudice; I'm tired of seeing them.  In my mind, the answer is almost always the same: Put your scenario in place, add monitoring, add traffic, evaluate results.

Add to the FAQ that questions ranging from the awful
	
	[how][1] [many][2] [users][3] [can a][4] [web][5] [server][6] [take][7]

to the specific

	"I have a 42U rack with maxed-out HP Proliant DL360 G8's; how many concurrent users will that support running [app environment] on [os]"

are going to be closed, because each application and environment is a unique and (more often ugly than beautiful) snowflake.  You need to test your particular snow-flakey circumstances.

----

This is not to say that questions about poor performance shouldn't be allowed.  "I'm running XYZ on ABC with CMYK and I'm RGB is slower than I'd expect. What should I check and what could I do to mitigate?" seems like a reasonable question to me...


  [1]: http://serverfault.com/q/164/50875
  [2]: http://serverfault.com/q/75680/50875
  [3]: http://serverfault.com/q/74580/50875
  [4]: http://serverfault.com/q/181141/50875
  [5]: http://serverfault.com/q/298087/50875
  [6]: http://serverfault.com/q/217861/50875
  [7]: http://serverfault.com/q/314710/50875