Introduction & Process of “Load Testing”

Introduction:

Load testing is the practice of sending simulated HTTP traffic to a server in order to measure performance. Load testing is performed by running load testing software on one machine (or a cluster of machines) to generate a large amount of requests to a web server on a second machine (or other more complex web serving infrastructure).

There are many such tools available:

• WebLOAD
• LoadUI NG Pro
• SmartMeter.io
• Apache JMeter
• LoadRunner
• Appvance
• NeoLoad
• LoadComplete
• WAPT
• Loadster
• LoadImpact
• Rational Performance Tester
• Testing Anywhere
• OpenSTA
• QEngine (ManageEngine)
• Loadstorm
• CloudTest
• Httperf

Process:

*LoadComplete is a tool for creating website load tests. Load testing involves simulating multiple virtual users that send requests to the tested web site concurrently and evaluating the web site performance under the massive load. Load testing of websites with LoadComplete includes the following steps:

1. “Recording a scenario”. You create scenarios by recording interactions with your tested web application or server. During the recording, LoadComplete captures all HTTP, HTTPS, and WebSocket traffic between your computer and the target server. To record a scenario, you need to start the recording, perform all desired actions against the tested web server and then stop the recording. When you start the recording, LoadComplete creates a load test based on the scenario. After you finish the recording, LoadComplete automatically saves it.
2. “Modifying the recorded traffic (optional)”. After you record a scenario, you may want to modify the recorded traffic. For example, you may want to remove unnecessary requests, change information sent to the web application and so on. You can do this in LoadComplete Scenario editor.
3. “Verifying the recorded scenario”. It is a good practice to verify that the recorded scenario works fine. To do this, run the Verify Scenario command for the scenario. LoadComplete will run a scenario for one virtual user and check whether the recorded traffic simulates correctly.
4. “Creating load tests that will simulate recorded traffic”. You create a load test on the basis of a verified scenario. You can record several scenarios that will simulate various user actions on the tested web site and create a load test that will run these scenarios simultaneously.You can also use a single-user test that LoadComplete creates automatically for a recorded scenario.
5. “Assigning recorded scenarios to desired virtual users”. After you create a load test, you assign the desired number of virtual users to it. The maximum number of concurrent virtual users that can be simulated on a single workstation is 2000. To simulate more virtual users, you can distribute them among several workstations.
6. “Running load tests”.When you run a load test, LoadComplete runs the Remote Agent processes (RAS.exe) to simulate virtual users. This process sends all the recorded requests to the target web server and then compares the received responses with the recorded responses. During the test run, LoadComplete neither opens the browser, nor loads any web pages to it.
7. “Analyzing load test results”. After the load test run is over, LoadComplete provides you with detailed information on simulated requests and received responses. It automatically shows the panel that contains detailed information on the test run and assists you in dealing with errors and warnings that occurred while the test was being executed (if any).