Yep, ridiculously expensive, grinder is good enough. In the enterprisey space where my day job is, load runner has a certain reputation (despite whether it deserves it or not). We found with the open source or cheaper tools (IBM rational tools included) under really high loads logging, measurements and the tools themselves got flaky. When you've got extremely limited time and hard deadlines in a hardware lab, time is the most precious commodity, so the cost can be worth it.
10000 hits, with 25 concurrent requests. You can keep cranking up -c n and see what happens. This is also useful for testing your network capability, e.g. simultaneous connections, from a fast remote network.
I'm working on a hosted load testing solution for this type of problem. Specifically, it will let you run full transactions against a web front-end. You record a script with your web browser and then upload it, and run a mass of virtual users executing those steps.
If you want an update when it's ready, shoot me an email. On gmail, I'm ebeland.
