Load Testing

Load Testing

Load testing is a kind of Performance Testing which determines a system's performance under real-life load conditions. This testing helps determine how the application behaves when multiple users access it simultaneously.

Need of Load Testing:

Some extremely popular sites have suffered serious downtime when they get massive traffic volumes. E-commerce websites invest heavily in advertising campaigns, but not in Load Testing to ensure optimal system performance, when that marketing brings in traffic.

Why Load Testing?

• Load testing gives confidence in the system & its reliability and performance.
• Load Testing helps identify the bottlenecks in the system under heavy user stress scenarios before they happen in a production environment.
• Load testing gives excellent protection against poor performance and accommodates complementary strategies for performance management and monitoring of a production environment.

Environment needs to be setup before starting the load testing:

Hardware Platform

Software Configuration

Server Machines Processors Memory Disk Storage Load Machines configuration Network configuration Strategies of load Testing: There are many numbers of ways to perform load testing. Following are a few load testing strategies- Manual Load Testing: This is one of strategies to execute load testing, but it does not produce repeatable results, cannot provide measurable levels of stress on an application and is an impossible process to coordinate. In house developed load testing tools: An organization, which realizes the importance of load testing, may build their own tools to execute load tests. Open source load testing tools: There are several load testing tools available as open source that are free of charge. They may not be as sophisticated as their paid counterparts, but if you are on a budget, they are the best choice. Enterprise class load testing tools: They usually come with capture/playback facility. They support a large number of protocols. They can simulate an exceptionally large number of users.

Operating System Server Software