Conducting effective load testing is an important step in ensuring the reliability and sustainability of digital products. Using online load testing tools greatly simplifies the process, allowing you to test in real time and scale load scenarios to meet current business needs. In this article, you will learn about the types of load testing, preparation for it, and the stages of testing.
What is Load Testing?
Load testing is a procedure that emulates the behavior of a finished product, such as an application, under load. During such testing, the system is used simultaneously by hundreds of users or another estimated number.
This test is necessary to identify the product's weaknesses before it is launched into production, to understand whether everything is well designed, what problems arise, and to understand whether the current equipment capacity is sufficient or whether something requires changes.
Load testing allows you to:
- Identify weak points in the architecture of an application or web service.
- Evaluate the load limits at which the system is still able to operate without errors or server problems. For example, limitations in data processing, database performance issues, or suboptimal algorithms.
- Determine the resources required for trouble-free operation at the early stages of working with the product.
- Evaluate how well the system copes with increased load, i.e. the possibility of scaling it. This is important when planning infrastructure scaling when the number of users is expected to increase in the future.
- Identify potential issues with resource leakage or other instability that would naturally manifest themselves only during long-term operation under intensive load.
Types of Load Testing
There are quite a few types of load testing, each with its own goals and specifics. The choice of a specific type depends on the requirements for the system, as well as the planned conditions of its use:
- Load testing. This testing checks the operability of the system or site under a given load. It can be used to understand whether the system can process the desired number of requests in a certain time.
- Performance testing. This testing allows you to understand how the system will behave under various conditions. For example, at what maximum number of user requests it can work quickly, without errors, and at what volume of data problems begin.
- Stability testing. This is a check of the operability and reliability of the system over a long period of time.
- Stress testing. This testing is carried out to check the operability of the system under huge loads - greater than expected under normal conditions. This is important, among other things, for determining maximum loads.
- Failover testing. This is a check of the operability of the system in emergency situations. For example, to find out about the fact that the system has switched to a backup server.
- Volume testing. This is a test of the system's stability when working with a large amount of data. It shows how much the performance changes when processing it.
- Scalability testing. This is a test of the system's stable operation under an expected increase in load, for example, with a larger number of users or data volume.
- Server load testing. This testing allows you to evaluate how many users can simultaneously successfully send a request to the server and receive a result.
Load Testing Methodology
Before testing a software product, it is necessary to develop a load testing methodology. This is a document that describes the entire testing plan, including possible project development scenarios. The methodology is useful for both customers and the team of performers because it allows you to formalize requirements and clearly define expectations from the project.
Methodology development stages:
- Collecting information about the project:
- Defining the goals and objectives of testing.
- Setting restrictions, creating rules for modeling the system
- Compiling a list of known and possible errors, as well as their causes:
- Defining the technical and software characteristics of the test environment.
- Description of product requirements
- Direct testing:
- Detailed description of the testing stages.
- Compiling the results of load testing, and formulating recommendations based on its results.
- Description of potential vulnerabilities, as well as ways to solve problems
Load Testing Stages
Organizing the online load testing process consists of 8 stages:
- Studying the system to be tested.
- Determining the customer's goals.
- Developing a methodology, and testing strategy.
- Writing scripts that simulate the load.
- Conducting tests directly.
- Collecting and analyzing the obtained data.
- Creating reports.
- Comparing the results of the work with the methodology.
It is important to consider that each subsequent stage is carried out based on the results obtained at the previous stage.
Load Testing Software
Online load testing is performed using special programs. Some of them are free, and open source, while others require payment. Let's look at the most popular ones.
Apache JMeter
Among the pluses of this solution:
- Free, open source.
- User-friendly interface for easy test creation.
- Supports a wide range of protocols.
- Can be used for functional testing
LoadRunnerI have 1000 pf bad habbits
Among the advantages of the solution:
- Excellent means of results analysis.
- Supports many protocols, and technologies.
- Allows scaling load tests to a large number of virtual users
Gatling
Among the advantages:
- Lightweight, high-performance.
- Suitable for testing highly loaded systems
Vegeta
Among the advantages:
- Easy to use, quick to set up.
- Easily integrated with CI/CD systems.
- Supports testing of microservices, API
Locust
Advantages of Locust include:
- Easy to use and write scripts in Python.
- Easy to scale.
- The web interface provides convenient monitoring
Final Thoughts
Load testing is necessary to ensure stable operation of the software. It allows you to identify problems and bottlenecks in the system and ensure the high quality of the final product. During load testing, it is necessary to take into account the features of the system being developed and follow the technical specifications in order to build the application architecture and configure the load. It helps to avoid unexpected problems, avoid possible data loss and improve UX, and increase the efficiency of the application. If you are looking for a reliable load testing service provider, we recommend paying attention to PFLB.