What about someone asking for tools to be used in benchmarking? Seems to me that would be perfectly on topic.

e.g. Someone might be looking for the tools and/or methods which might be employed to perform benchmarking on say various RAID configurations (there's more to the world than just web servers). It's not enough to just throw a load at it, you need to make measurements as well and the right tools can be a great help.

**Edit:** [This question][1] I saw today very nicely illustrates my point.


  [1]: http://serverfault.com/q/352990/9278