Stress Test
Will the end user response times be within acceptable parameters when the system is under load?
At what point will the end users’ response time start to degrade and at what point will the system become unusable?
How much hardware is/will be required?
Will the chosen hardware and software stack perform efficiently and effectively with the concurrent user densities and expected load levels?
Will the system continue to function during temporary overload situations?
Will the system perform in a virtual environment?
Will the system recover from an overload or will it catastrophically fail?
Will the load balancer correctly distribute the load?
Will the high availability work if a server crashes while the system is under load?
Objective: A stress test can help you validate:
your selected hardware and software stack is capable of supporting required levels of capacity and is responsive to end users during expected normal and peak load levels
will expose scalability characteristics, signatures and end user response times to reveal how the system will behave under ever increasing load levels and ultimately when overloaded.
Information often overlooked by other testing companies – but not by Scapa – is how the system behaves when load is reduced after an overload. Will the system recover gracefully? Scapa Technologies consulting services use Scapa TPP, our testing and monitoring tool, to test systems from end to end (client through to server) as standard.
Scope: A stress test, where load will be introduced under ever increasing load levels, will be performed that will drive the system beyond its capacity using real user diagnostic transactions covering core system function (login, logout, basic read and write transactions) for key business application(s). System behavior is not the focus of the stress test, instead, we are interested in understanding how robust and available the system is and how it handles errors. A stress test can also be used to predict hardware requirements.
Outcome: The Scapa Technologies professional services report will provide an understanding of the information gathered during the stress test. The stress test will seek to map what we term the edge of the “capacity envelope” (see Note below) and may provide clues to which elements of a workload are likely to give capacity problems and/or any future system hardware requirements.
Optimum time to run: Stress tests should be undertaken prior to deployment, before and after upgrades, before and after migration, before and after patching and frequently on the production systems (read only transitions) during out-of-hours.
