If your looking for a really quick and easy way to load test a deployed Rails app you can’t get much simpler than Apaches ab tool.
To load test public pages just use
ab -n100 -c5 -t10 http://google.co.za/
-n requests Number of requests to perform
-c concurrency Number of multiple requests to make
-t timelimit Seconds to max. wait for responses
To load test secured pages you will need pass cookie information
ab -n100 -c5 -t10 -C identifier=cookie http://mysite.co.za/secured_page
Getting the cookie details using Chrome is really easy.
1. Login to the secured area
2. Find the request in Developer Tools => Network
3. Look for the cookie details in the response headers
Happy load testing!