Report: Performance testing workshop at CzechTest 2016
Since we are in the field of performance testing for quite some time we decided to share some of our knowledge and prepared a practical workshop.
We started with a short presentation to explain on the theoretical level WHY and HOW to do performance testing and then moved on to the practical part and actually tried to take down a website.
Why do performance testing
Did you know that performance testing does not only help you predict your system behavior under load but it is also a great way to properly configure your infrastructure and applications—performance tuning—and also helps to discover concurrency issues?
What are the main benefits of perf testing:
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To be able to simulate and measure system’s behaviour under load in test environment – anticipate the future.
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Super-performing environment can be limited by bad configuration – verify and fix bad configurations.
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Even small load with unlucky timing can cause great troubles – discover concurrency issues.
- Performance testing brings benefits for customers, business owners and maintainers.
How to do perfomance testing
In the HOW part we focused on a performance testing tool and methodology which are both a necessity when doing serious performance tests.
What are the main learning outcomes:
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I need a tool. Tools supporting distributed load creation are the best.
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I should stick to a methodology.
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I need to test the system from multiple points of view (architecture, configuration, applications).
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One test script can be run multiple times focusing on various weak spots.
- I need to cooperate with the tested system owners.
Practical part: Load testing a demo web
However, the bigger part of the workshop was purely practical. All demonstrations were done using our tool.
We were glad to see that all the attendees successfully followed the steps and that together we recorded, modified and executed few test scenarios.
At the very end we tried to stress test our simple demo web but all we could find out was, quite expectably, the limit of local WiFi connectivity :-).
Workshop presentation
If you’re interested in the theoretical part of the workshop, you can take a look at the presentation for more details.
Do you have any questions about our workshop or perf testing in general? Let us know in the comments!
