The rise of the social networking phenomenon has spurred demand for a highly
scalable and flexible solution for hosting applications. Many larger sites are
growing at 100% a year, and smaller sites are expanding at an even more rapid pace, doubling every few months. Such rapid growth in user population requires a highly flexible and scalable infrastructure. Today, many sites are using open source solutions and platforms as a way to ensure applications can scale as needed.

Many developers and deployers use extremely simple static file retrieval tests to evaluate Web servers, often leading to erroneous conclusions. Understanding the challenges faced by Web 2.0 customers, Sun created Olio. Developed by engineers with years of experience and understanding related to the complexities associated with creating multitier workloads, Olio provides a realistic workload that can help test the performance and scalability of Web 2.0 technologies. This Sun BluePrints™ article describes a reasonably sized, scalable Web 2.0 deployment. Olio helped validate and tune the solution, resulting in several best practices for deployment.