Read on to learn about cloud performance testing and the best approach to attain software success.
The introduction of cloud technology has turned out to be one of the most significant innovations of the decade. The wide adoption of cloud-based frameworks has wholly redefined how computing is done. And therefore, it was very likely for cloud solutions to leverage the entire concept of testing.
Going a few years back in time, testing turned out to be an extremely cumbersome process that needed significant resource investment and infrastructure setup. Besides, the ever-expanding business landscape makes all the processes extremely complex to make space for in-house testing facilities.
Talking of the present scenario, most sites we have access to are based on cloud computing architecture, making it even more important to focus on performance and security goals. In this article, we will talk about the whole concept of cloud performance testing while highlighting the perfect approach to attain software success.
Cloud Performance Testing: The Definition
At its most basic, performance testing is a part of the quality assurance process that aims to measure a software application’s responsiveness and stability under different loads. And therefore, cloud performance testing can be defined as the testing of applications or software running in the cloud.
The primary advantage of running an application or software in the cloud is the extensive access to computing, network, and storage resources. However, the mere provisioning of resources available on the cloud does not make an application fast. It is because of the data-intensive workload that comes along with the application and its architecture. Thus, it becomes necessary to test an application moved from on-prem to the cloud to compare the performance benchmarks across environments to meet the SLAs and user experience goals. And just in case you are working with a cloud-native application, you can even progress with standard performance testing ahead of production.
Thus, cloud performance testing determines how an application would function in a cloud-hosted environment while reducing bottlenecks and enhancing the capacity to handle peak workloads. Thus, the ultimate objective behind cloud performance testing is to simulate real-world users interacting with the application to validate and verify the system’s responsiveness. Since the performance equals transaction time and user experience, it even works on testing scalability, speed, and overall stability of the system.
Measuring performance is vital to work on the financial impact that cloud services could bring with a cloud-based application or software. Moreover, it is crucial to meet the reliability and scalability goals of the product under test.
Types Of Performance Testing on the Cloud
When it comes to performance testing on the cloud, testers usually work on load testing and stress testing to check the system capacity, latency, and throughput. The objective behind load testing is to check the application performance under the expected load conditions, while stress testing aims at testing applications under heavy loads.
Apart from these, cloud testing service providers tend to perform different sets of performance tests when working on cloud performance testing. These include:
- Load Test: To measure performance under normal and peak loads
- Stress Test: To measure app performance under extreme loads
- Browser Test: To validate application performance for different web browsers
- Latency Test: To check the time taken to move a data packet from one end to another within a network
- Targeted Infrastructure Test: To isolate and measure every layer or app component to test its performance
- Failover Test: To test the app’s ability to move to a backup system in case of failure. It even checks on the app’s capability to provide extra resources in case of server downtime
- Capacity Test: To check or measure the users the app could accommodate before the performance test fails
- Soak Test: To measure the app performance under high load for an extended time period
There are many performance testing tools that have the capacity to run as cloud-based tools and therefore provide the ability to run as load tests constituting millions of concurrent users coming from diverse geographies.
Testing Tools
When it comes to performance testing, there are so many open-source tools available in the market that can help with cloud performance testing. Some of the most popular names could be listed as:
- Apache JMeter
- BlazeMeter
- Gatling
- IBM Rational Performance Tester
- LoadStorm
- LoadNinja
- LoadView
- Oracle VDbench
- SmartMeter
- Watir
- WebLOAD
- Xamarin Test Cloud
Performance Testing Applications
When working on a solid app performance testing strategy, there are certain necessary steps that help a tester to meet the scope of the project.
Scope & Criteria
The primary step of performance testing in the cloud begins with collecting requirements, defining goals, and setting objectives. This phase usually works on identifying the performance characteristics such as response time, resource utilization, and throughput. Also, this stage needs QA testers to identify the configurations for the network, hardware, and software to ensure smooth testing. Besides, it even involves comparing the production and test environment to get over any possible risks that can hamper the test results.
Test Plan & Design
The second stage of the performance testing process aims at identifying the usage scenarios while determining the variability, identifying the test data, generating new data, and defining metrics to collect for testing. This data is further fed to the workload profiles.
Test Environment Configuration
The third phase involves preparing the right set of tools and test designs for effective execution. Moreover, it aims at configuring the test environment and monitoring the resources.
Test Execution
Once done with the tools and test designs, the test execution part is processed where various performance tests are performed to collect the data and further aim for analysis.
Monitoring & Fine Tuning
Last but not least, the process aims at consolidating and analyzing the findings from the tests. Furthermore, the test results obtained are used to finetune the test plan and therefore process the application for infrastructure and other requirements.
The Crux
When it comes to benefits surrounding cloud performance testing, such as validation of the application running per the defined standards in the cloud environment, the information processed thus helps to ensure an optimal user experience. Also, the assurance evolved through application performance can be used to meet innovation’s flexibility, scalability, and overhead goals.
Moreover, cloud performance testing is a progressive move to get over any issues or bottlenecks that are likely to lurk in the application or the database. Moreover, running performance tests on an application could help identify bugs and mitigate the possible issues early in the source code.
Besides, when it comes to database goals, performance testing helps you achieve accuracy on the configuration to meet the cache size, bucket size, and I/O optimization. Also, the information leveraged can be used to work on resources such as database needs related to storage and processors. Overall, performance testing is a go-to approach for IT solution providers and developers who need help isolating and modifying the cloud computing environment.
