Performance Testing Why and How?

Sudheer Parpatakam

2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice

Agenda
Why Performance Testing? Performance Testing Workflow HP LoadRunner Solutions

Why Load Test Your Application?

Prevents costly failures of mission-critical applications. Assures performance and functionality under realworld conditions. Locates potential problems before your customers do. Reduces development time. Reduces infrastructure costs.
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Types of Performance Testing

Examples of Performance Test Objectives

Application response time
How long does it take to complete a task?

Reliability
How stable is the system under a heavy work load?

Capacity planning Configuration sizing

Which configuration provides the best performance level? At what point does performance degradation occur?

Regression
Does a new version of the software adversely affect response time?
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Bottleneck identification
What is the cause of the performance degrading?

Performance Testing Expert Workflow

Establish Goals Gather System Usage Information Analyze System Under Test

GOALS

Defining Goals

Why

start with conceptual goals?

Conceptual goals should outline all of your load test objectives.

Examples of conceptual goals:

A high-priority example is the responsiveness of a Search function. Are we able to get search results within a reasonable time? A second example is the system administrators concern that the Update transaction functions during heaving usage.

In the initial stages, jotting down goals that cant be measured will allow later filtering to create more focused goals.
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GOALS

Quantifying Load Testing Goals

GATHERING INFORMATION

Gathering System Usage Information

Why gather system usage information?

Allows you to:
Decide which business processes to test. Isolate peak loads and peak load times. Document user actions and valid input data for each

business process.

Where can we get information?

Using the site, first-hand Consulting with administrators Consulting with executives Researching competitors sites

GATHERING DATA

Obtaining Customer Locations

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ANALYZING SYSTEM

Analyzing the System Under Test

Why gather system usage information?

Allows you to setup monitors. Allows you to effectively coordinate with backend experts. Provides system information that helps isolate performance

problems.

Where can we get information?

System Administrators Backend experts Application experts Database Administrators

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BUSINESS PROCESSES

Identifying Business Processes to Test

Mission-Critical Business Process
Business Processes that are crucial in day-to-day

operations.

Heavy Throughput
Heavy throughput business processes may not be mission-

critical but are very popular.

Dynamic Content
Dynamic content consists of sever requests that are

customized for each user.

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BUSINESS PROCESSES

Business Processes to Test: Mission-Critical Transactions

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BUSINESS PROCESSES

Business Processes to Test: Heavy Throughput

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BUSINESS PROCESSES

Business Processes to Test: Dynamic Content

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BUSINESS PROCESSES

Business Process Profile

Business Typical Process Day Name

Sign in Create new account Search for flights View flight booking Purchase ticket 70/hr 10/hr 130/hr 20/hr 40/hr

Peak day

Dynamic content
Light Moderate Moderate Moderate Heavy

Mission critical
High Low Moderate High High

Test

210/hr 15/hr 180/hr 30/hr 90/hr

? ? ? ? ?

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DOCUMENTATION

Documenting User Steps and Input Data

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DOCUMENTATION

Determining Valid Test Data to Use

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DOCUMENTATION

Valid Test Data Sources

Valid input data comes from three sources: Master Data
Also known as Application Data Data is resident in the applications database Examples: ID numbers and passwords

User-Generated Data
Originates with the user Examples: new unique ID or email address

External Data
Data is unknown before the application is run Examples: confirmation and purchase order numbers
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CONCURRENCY

Defining Concurrency
Concurrency A set of users acting upon an application in a similar manner at the same time.

Application Level
How many users are active on the system?

Business Process Level

How many users are buying tickets?

Transaction Level
How many users are buying tickets NOW?

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CONCURRENCY

Application Concurrency

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CONCURRENCY

Business Process Concurrency

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CONCURRENCY

Transaction Concurrency
How many transactions will need to be run per minute if a load test has to be run for two hours with 5000 users, assuming an average transaction length of five minutes?
Determine how many transactions run per minute:
120 min / 5 min = 24 iterations for each user 5000 users X 24 iterations = 120,000 transactions 120,000 transactions / 120 minutes = 1000 transactions per minute

Apply the transactional concurrency to the application:

The test is run during the 10-12 AM time slot The test should consist of 5000 users running 24 iterations The system must be able to handle 1000 transactions per minute
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ANALYZING SYSTEM

Understanding the System Components

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ANALYZING SYSTEM

Mapping Business Processes to Infrastructure Components

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MONITORING

Monitoring Application Components

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ENVIRONMENT

About the Test Environment

A test environment:
Allows data to be written, read, and destroyed without

affecting production users.

Allows test system to be rebooted during test runs without

affecting production users.

The test environment:

Should mirror the production system. Needs business processes that are functioning correctly. Should include Benchmark runs. Must contain sufficient hardware to generate the load

test.

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HP LOADRUNNER SOLUTION

Manual Testing is Problematic

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HP LOADRUNNER SOLUTION

The LoadRunner Solution

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LOADRUNNER COMPONENTS

LoadRunners Load Testing Components

The Controller is an administrative center for creating, maintaining, and executing Scenarios. The Controller assigns Vusers and load generators to Scenarios, starts and stops load tests, and performs other administrative tasks. Load generators (also known as hosts) are used to run the Vusers that generate load on the application under test.

LR CONTROLLER

LR LOAD GENERATORS

LR ANALYSIS

LR Analysis uses the load test results to create graphs and reports that are used to correlate system information, identify bottlenecks, and performance issues.

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LOADRUNNER COMPONENTS

VuGen

VuGen Virtual User Generator (VuGen) records Vuser scripts that emulate the steps of real users using the application.

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PROTOCOLS

Supported Protocols

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MONITORING PERFORMANCE

Supported Performance Monitors

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BENCHMARK

Benchmarking Run
To validate that there is enough test hardware available in the test environment, benchmark the business processes against the testing hardware. Take a business process and execute a small number of users against the application.
Validates the functionality of the business process Potentially exposes unknown data dependencies

Evaluate the testing infrastructure against the footprint.

Do I have enough hardware to generate the user load? Do I have enough memory? Do I have enough CPUs?

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Summary
Performance Testing Objectives Define Goals, Gather Data & Analyze System HP LoadRunner Solution

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Questions?

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