Performance Testing ensures that the application is performing well under the workload. The goal of performance testing is not to find bugs but to eliminate performance bottlenecks. It measures the quality attributes of the system. The attributes of Performance Testing include:
Speed It determines whether the application responds quickly.
Scalability It determines the maximum user load the software application can handle.
Stability It determines if the application is stable under varying loads.
Without performance testing, the software is likely to suffer from issues such as running slow while several users use it simultaneously, inconsistencies across different operating systems and poor usability.
Benefits of Performance testing include
Validate features Performance testing validates the fundamental features of the software. Measuring the performance of basic software functions allows business leaders to take key decisions about the setup of the software.
Measure the speed, accuracy, and stability. It helps you in monitoring the crucial components of your software under duress. This gives you vital information on how the software will be able to handle scalability.
Keep your users happy. Measuring application performance allows you to observe how your customers respond to your software. The advantage is that you can pinpoint critical issues before your customers.
Identify discrepancies. Measuring performance provides a buffer for developers before release. Any issues are likely to be magnified once they are released.
Improve optimisation and load capability. Measuring performance can help your organisation deal with volume so your software can cope when you hit high levels of users.
The right time for any applications performance testing would be
When the application is functionally stable and
When it's fully in the state and the application is ready to sustain the loads.
Performance testing can be done in seven steps:
Identify the testing environment.
Identify performance metrics.
Plan and design performance tests.
Configure the test environment.
Implement your test design.
Run tests.
Analyse, report, and retest.
Types of performance testing:
Different types of performance testing are below and should be chosen according to our requirements.
Load testing: Checks the application's ability to perform under anticipated user loads. The objective is to identify performance bottlenecks before the software application goes live.
Stress testing: involves testing an application under extreme workloads to see how it handles high traffic or data processing. The objective is to identify the breaking point of an application.
Endurance testing: It is done to make sure the software can handle the expected load over a long period of time.
Spike testing: Tests the software's reaction to sudden large spikes in the load generated by users.
Volume testing: Under volume testing, a large no. of data is populated in a database, and the overall software system's behaviour is monitored. The objective is to check the software application's performance under varying database volumes.
Scalability testing: The objective of scalability testing is to determine the software application's effectiveness in "scaling up" to support an increase in user load. It helps plan capacity addition to your software system.
Cloud performance testing has the benefit of being able to test applications at a larger scale while also maintaining the cost benefits of being in the cloud. At first, organisations thought that moving performance testing to the cloud would ease the performance testing process while making it more scalable. The thought process was that an organisation could offload the process to the cloud, and that would solve all their problems. However, when organisations began doing this, they started to find that there were still issues in conducting performance testing in the cloud, as the organisation won't have in-depth, white-box knowledge on the cloud provider's side.
One of the challenges with moving an application from an on-premises environment to the cloud is complacency. Developers and IT staff may assume that the application will work just the same once it reaches the cloud. They'll minimise testing and QA and proceed with a quick rollout. Because the application is being tested on another vendor's hardware, testing may not be as accurate if it were hosted on the premises.
Development and operations teams should then be coordinated to check for security gaps, conduct load testing, assess scalability, consider user experience and map servers, ports and paths.
Inter-application communication can be one of the biggest issues in moving an app to the cloud. Cloud environments will typically have more security restrictions on internal communications than on-premises environments. An organisation should construct a complete map of which servers, ports and communication paths the application uses before moving to the cloud. Conducting performance monitoring may help as well.
Common glitches observed in performance testing
During performance testing of software, developers often look for performance symptoms and issues. Speed issues, slow responses and long load times, for example, often are observed and addressed. But there are other performance problems that can be detected, including:
Bottlenecks This occurs when data flow is interrupted or halted due to not having enough capacity to handle workloads.
Poor scalability If software cannot handle the desired number of concurrent tasks, results could be delayed, errors could increase, or other unexpected behaviour could happen that affects:
Disk usage
CPU usage
Memory leaks
OS limitations
Poor network configuration
Software configuration issues often settings are not set at a sufficient level to handle the workload.
Insufficient hardware resources Performance testing may reveal physical memory constraints or low-performing CPUs.
Metrics within performance testing A number of performance metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), can help an organisation evaluate current performance.
Performance metrics commonly include
Throughput How many units of information a system processes over a specified time
Memory The working storage space available to a processor or workload
Response time, or latency The amount of time that elapses between a user-entered request and the start of a system's response to that request
Bandwidth The volume of data per second that can move between workloads, usually across a network
CPU interrupts per second. The number of hardware interrupts a process receives per second
In conclusion, performance testing is essential before releasing software to ensure customer satisfaction. Performance testing with the right tools gives the required data to make the right decisions, protecting and increasing the revenue and reputation, even in the most unpredictable phases of growth and change.
Thank you so much for putting in the time to come visit the all-things-testing blog.
Best regards
all-things-testing
PS: Please write back to me if you need assistance with Performance Testing. I will do my best to help you with clarifications or end-to-end understanding and design of Performance tests.
댓글