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Performance Testing Overview

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Agenda

Performance Testing - Definition.

Why Performance Testing?

Throughput and Response Time - Definition.

When Performance Testing is required?

Performance Testing Challenges.

What should be performance tested?

Performance Testing Types.

Performance Testing Process.

Difference between Load and Stress Testing.

Load Test configuration for a web system.

Load Test Planning – Need and Process.

Tools used for Performance Testing.

Performance Test Methodology.

Q & A

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Performance Testing - Definition

 Performance testing is the process of determining the speed or effectiveness of a computer, network,
software program or device or an application.

 The testing to evaluate the response time (speed), throughput and utilization of system to execute its
required functions in comparison with different versions of the same product or a different competitive
product is called Performance Testing.

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Why Performance Testing ?

• Identifies problems early on before they become costly to resolve.

• Reduces development cycles.

• Produces better quality, more scalable code.

• Prevents revenue and credibility loss due to poor Web site performance.

• Enables intelligent planning for future expansion.

• To ensure that the system meets performance expectations such as response time, throughput etc
under given levels of load.

• Expose bugs that do not surface in cursory testing, such as memory management bugs, memory leaks,
buffer overflows, etc.

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Functional vs. Load Web Testing

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Physical Architecture

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Throughput and Response Time - Definition

The factors that governs Performance testing are as follows:-

 Throughput
 Throughput
Response Time
• Capability of a product to handle multiple transactions
in a give period.

• Throughput represents the number of

requests/business transactions processed by the
product in a specified time duration.

• As the number of concurrent users increase, the

throughput increases almost linearly with the number
of requests. As there is very little congestion within the
Application Server system queues.

• In the heavy load zone or Section B, as the concurrent

client load increases, throughput remains relatively
constant.

• In Section C (the buckle zone) one or more of the

system components have become exhausted and
throughput starts to degrade. For example, the system
might enter the buckle zone when the network
connections at the Web server exhaust the limits of the
network adapter or if the requests exceed operating
system limits for file handles.

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Response Time

• It is equally important to find out how much time each of the transactions took to complete.

• Response time is defined as the delay between the point of request and the first response from the product.

• The response time increases proportionally to the user load.

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When Performance Testing is required?

Design Phase:

Pages containing lots of images and multimedia for reasonable wait times. Heavy loads are less important than
knowing which types of content cause slowdowns.

Development Phase:

To check results of individual pages and processes, looking for breaking points, unnecessary code and bottlenecks.

Deployment Phase:

To identify the minimum hardware and software requirements for the application.

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Performance Testing Challenges

• Requirements gathering -- is little difficult if the customer does not has any idea on the non functional requirements.

• Setting up exact replica of Perf Prod Env -- The Performance environment where all the activities will take place needs to
scale up with the production environment.

• Identification of Functional flows -- The scenarios/workflows identified should have the maximum coverage of the product
and also it should be critical and database transaction workflows.

• Re-usability of Scripts -- Scripts that have been used in previous rounds of testing for an application are often times
unreliable at best on new builds. This issue will frequently cause additional time and cost for re-scripting on the latest build.

• Code changes affecting the Scripting -- Code changes after the Performance tuning will adversely affect the script and it is
not guaranteed that the same script will work to validate the memory leaks. With that said, additional time should be
reserved to perform script enhancement.

• Tool related issues -- If any Tool related issue is encountered in the mid of the execution then the entire test has to be
repeated.

• Proper Analysis -- to find out Exact bottle necks.

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What should be performance tested?

• High frequency transactions: The most frequently used transactions have the potential to impact the performance of all of
the other transactions if they are not efficient.

• Mission Critical transactions: The more important transactions that facilitate the core objectives of the system should be
included, as failure under load of these transactions has, by definition, the greatest impact.

• Read Transactions: At least one READ ONLY transaction should be included, so that performance of such transactions can be
differentiated from other more complex transactions.

• Update Transactions: At least one update transaction should be included so that performance of such transactions can be
differentiated from other transactions.

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Performance Testing Types

Few Performance Testing Types are as follows:

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Performance Testing Process

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1.1.Planning
Planning

Determine the performance testing objectives

Describe the application to test using a application model

1. Describe the Hardware environment

2. Create a Benchmark (Agenda) to be recorded in Phase 2.

A. Define what tasks each user will perform

B. Define (or estimate) the percentage of users per task.

2.2.Record
Record

Record
Record the defined testing activities that will be used as a foundation for your load test
scripts. One activity per task or multiple activities depending on user task definition

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3.3.Modify
Modify

Modify
Modify load test scripts defined by recorder to reflect more realistic Load test simulations.
Defining the project, users
Randomize parameters (Data, times, environment)
Randomize user activities that occur during the load test

4.4.Execute
Execute

Virtual Users (VUs): Test Goals

Start: 5 Max Response Time <= 20 Sec
Incremented by: 5
Maximum: 200
Think Time: 5 sec

Test Script:
One typical user from login through completion.

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5.5.Monitor
Monitor

Monitoring the scenario: We monitor scenario execution using the various online runtime monitors. 

6.6. Analyze
Analyze

Analysing test results: During scenario execution, the tool records the performance of the
application under different loads. We use the graphs and reports to analyse the application’s
performance.

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Difference between Load and Stress Testing

Load Testing
• Process of exercising the system under test by feeding it the largest
tasks it can operate with.
• Constantly increasing the load on the system via automated tools
to simulate real time scenario with virtual users.

Examples:
• Testing a word processor by editing a very large document.
• For Web Application load is defined in terms of concurrent users or
HTTP connections.

Stress Testing
• Trying to break the system under test by overwhelming its resources
or by taking resources away from it.
• Purpose is to make sure that the system fails and recovers gracefully.

Examples:
• Double the baseline number for concurrent users/HTTP connections.
• Randomly shut down and restart ports on the network
switches/routers that connects servers.

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Load Test configuration for a web system

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Load Test Planning – Need and Process

Planning load testing helps to:

Build test scenarios that accurately emulate your working environment: Load testing means testing the application under
typical working conditions, and checking for system performance, reliability, capacity, and so forth.

Understand which resources are required for testing: Application testing requires hardware, software, and human
resources. Before beginning testing, we should know which resources are available and decide how to use them effectively.

Define success criteria in measurable terms: Focused testing goals and test criteria ensure successful testing. For example,
it’s not enough to define vague objectives like “Check server response time under heavy load.” A more focused success
criterion would be “Check that 50 customers can check their account balance simultaneously & that server response time
will not exceed 1- minute”

Load test planning is a three-step process:

 Analyzing the Application

• Analysis ensures that the testing environment we create will accurately reflect the environment and configuration of
the application under test.

 Defining Testing Objectives

• Before testing, we should define exactly what we want to accomplish.

 Gathering Requirements
• All the requirements and resources should be evaluated and collected beforehand to avoid any last minute hurdles.

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Analyzing the Application

• Load testing does not require as much knowledge of the application as functional testing does.

• Load tester should have some operational knowledge of the application to be tested.

• Load tester should have the idea on how the application is actually used in production to make an informed estimate.

• Load tester must know the application architecture (Client Server, Local Deployment, Live URL), Platform and Database used.

Defining Testing Objectives

• Determining and recording performance testing objectives involves communicating with the team to establish and update these
objectives as the project advances through milestones

• Performance, Load or Stress testing: Type and scope of testing should be clear as each type of testing has different requirements.

• Goal Setting: General load testing objectives should be defined.

• Common Objectives:
 Measuring end-user response time
 Defining optimal hardware configuration
 Checking reliability
 Assist the development team in determining the performance characteristics for various configuration options
 Ensure that the new production hardware is no slower than the previous release
 Provide input data for scalability and capacity-planning efforts
 Determine if the application is ready for deployment to production
 Detect bottlenecks to be tuned

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Gathering Requirements

Users: Identify all the types of people and processes that can put load on the application or system.
 Defining the types of primary end users of the application or system such as purchasers, claims processors, and sales
reps
 Add other types of users such as system administrators, managers, and report readers who use the application or
system but are not the primary users.
 Add types of non-human users such as batch processes, system backups, bulk data loads and anything else that may
add load or consume system resources.

Transactions: For each type of user we identified in the previous step, identify the tasks that the user performs.

Production Environment:
 Performance and capacity of an application is significantly affected by the hardware and software components on
which it executes.

Production Environment:
 Speed, capacity, IP address and name, version numbers and other significant information.

Test Environment:
 Should be similar to the production environment as is possible to be able to get meaningful performance results.
 It is important that the databases be set up with the same amount of data in the same proportions as the production
environment as that can substantially affect the performance.

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Scenarios:
 Select the use cases to include
 Determine how many instances of each use case will run concurrently
 Determine how often the use cases will execute per hour
 Select the test environment

Load test Tool:

 Ability to parameterize data.
 Ability to capture dynamic data and use on subsequent requests.
 Application infrastructure monitoring.
 Support for the application's protocols

Load test Lab must include the following:

 Test Servers.
 Databases.
 Network elements, operating systems and clients and server hardware.

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Tools used for Performance Testing

Commercial
Open Source
• Load Runner
• Apache Jmeter • Rational Performance Tester
• The Grinder • WebLoad
• Pylot  • Wapt
• OpenSTA • NeoLoad
• LoadUI 
• Benerator
• FunkLoad
• Hammerora 
• SLAMD Distributed Load Generation Engine (SLAMD)
• Tsung 

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Performance Test Methodology

Virtual User Generation

Scripting
• Scripting
Requirement Gathering Test Planning • Parameterizing
• Focus on Non-functional • Recognize the mission • Correlating
Requirements. critical workflows. • Custom code C functions.
• Estimate the User-base in • Set up the performance
production and scale up to environment.
the performance • Recognize the Benchmark
environment. performance criteria.
Load test
• Set number of Virtual users
• Set number of Iterations
PERFORMANCE • Set the ramp rate.
• Set rendezvous points

TEST LIFE CYCLE.

Test Monitoring
• Overall throughput
• Total hits per seconds
• System resource utilization

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Performance Test Methodology (cont.....)

Analyze test results

PERFORMANCE • Generate test report
• Formulate system

TEST LIFE CYCLE. performance parameters

• Identify performance
Bottlenecks.

Profiling
• Memory profiling
• Heap Walker
• CPU Profiling
• Thread profiling

Performance Tuning
• Generate test report
• Formulate system
Capacity Planning performance parameters
• Based on the reports • Identify performance
estimation of Bottlenecks
Application Scalability
and Stability.

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Q&A

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Thank you

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