Learning Performance Testing

[Kim]

Hello all,

I am learning a bit about performance testing recently and thought I would share how we approached a load testing need/problem and to hopefully get some more tips and tricks. 🙂

The performance test we did was for a re-launch of a website.

First step was to define reasons as to why we wanted to load and performance test the website:
1. Ensure new infrastructure is reliable and responsive
2. Find maximum capacity so as to respond adequately to traffic spikes

We then set Load Testing objectives:
1. Handle up to 1000 users per hour (~20% more than the greatest load experienced so far).
2. 200 users should be able to use the site simultaneously.
3. Error rate below 1%

Then we used existing google analytic metrics to analyse a typical user journey through the website and blog, for example:
Blog: The average user reads 1.3 articles, so the test will ensure 2 articles are read.
In this journey the test will:
Navigate to the root domain
Navigate to /blog
Navigate to an article
Navigate to a related article
Leave the site

We had a couple of these scenarios ranging from simple as above to more complex.
Following those tests we added 2 more:
1. A final test journey is a random selection of URLs from the sitemap to more accurately represent user indecisiveness and randomosity.
2. Programmatically; load the sitemap XML, parse it, create HTTP requests

Issues we had:
1. Local machines were bottlenecks – JVM and internet could not keep up with large number of requests
2. Development work stopped by excessive testing – slowed the manual test environment down
3. Maths (because threads, ramping up times etc were new to us)

How do you approach load and performance testing? Any tips for a newbie in the field?

[Thanh]

@Kim,
Thanks for sharing.
I’m curious to know more about Performance testing…what is your favorite source to learn performance testing?

[crystal]

Thanks for sharing Kim.Looking forward for your new posts regarding performance testing.

[Tommy]

Hello, I would like to thank you for sharing this useful material. Testing is quite new for me, so I appreciate any kind of material related to it. I remember how hard to start from scratch. It was with my resume when I was trying to google jobs. Luckily I came across one place here which helped me to do it so fast and easily. Now I got a job as a tester.

[Mark]

Hi Kim,

To overcome your local machine issues, I would use a remote host like Blazemeter, which can run your JMeter scripts off the VMs they spin up.

JMeter also has some nice ramp up and throughput averaging features.

Also, it’s always best to test in an isolated environment, not only because you don’t want to impact, your dev or test colleague but also whatever they are doing may skew your own results.

[Ethel]

That’s a great approach to performance testing! Defining clear objectives is key. Thinking about user journeys like navigating the blog and reading articles is smart. Have you considered simulating more interactive elements? Maybe even mimicking the quick, impulsive clicks seen in addictive io games? This can help you uncover unexpected bottlenecks. The random URL selection is a fantastic addition.

[Author]

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