Overview

Overview¶

Performance Testing is an overloaded term that is used to refer to several subcategories of performance related testing, each of which has a different purpose.

Load Testing Strategies¶

Load Testing Strategies

Load Test Strategy	Used for	Goal	Virtual Users
Smoke Test	Involves a minimal load and are used to ensure the system functions correctly under such conditions while establishing baseline performance metrics. If you observe poor performance with these low virtual user (VU) numbers, report the issue, resolve the environment problems, and rerun a smoke test before proceeding with additional tests.	Verify that your test script doesn’t have errors. Verify that your system doesn’t throw any errors (performance or system related) when under minimal load. Gather baseline performance metrics of your system’s response under minimal load.	< 5
Average Load Test	Assesses how the system performs under typical load. Typical load might be a regular day in production or an average moment.	Assess the performance of your system under a typical load. Identify early degradation signs during the ramp-up or full load periods. Assure that the system still meets the performance standards after system changes (code and infrastructure).	Can start with 100 VUs.
Stress Test	Evaluates the system's performance under unusually high loads or higher than the average load.	Identify any degradation in response time as the load exceeds average utilization.	Average Load + approximately 20-30% more.
Spike Test	Checks if the system can withstand and function during sudden, massive surges in system usage.	Check how fast pods operate, how quickly the system recovers after a sudden load increase, the time it takes to return to normal, and how key system processes behave during the overload.	Very large VUs in a short amount of time (shorter to zero ramp-up and ramp-down time)
Breakpoint Test	Breakpoint testing aims to find system limits.	To tune or care for the system's weak spots to relocate those higher limits at higher levels. To help plan remediation steps in those cases and prepare for when the system nears those limits.	Initial to Peak Users on a slow ramp-up time until application breaks.
Soak Test	Focuses on extended periods, analyzing the system's degradation of performance, availability, stability, and resource consumption over extended periods of time.	Monitor for changes in any performance metric as time passes. Expected outcome is that the performance and resource utilization of the backend stays stable or within expected variations.	Same with Average Load, but longer duration (8 hours minimum)