Performance is a direct reflection on your

company
Your client does not care about the cause

Cause

can come from many

sources

Poor architecture
Poor configuration
Inadequate hardware
Insufficient network bandwidth

Why Isnt Performance Testing Done

Takes

time
Takes production or
production- like environment
Takes a special skill set
Takes specialized tools

Why Isnt Performance Testing Done

Can

take lots of $$$$$!

Proprietary tools can cost 100s of

thousands of dollars to buy and
maintain

Option

1 Do nothing
Option 2 Keep buying hardware
Option 3 Buy an expensive load
and performance tool. Hire a tool
expert to use it.
Option 4 Allocate in-house
personnel to build a custom solution

Option

5 Pray

Big

tool little price

Utilize an industry recognized

best-of-breed tool at a greatly
reduced cost

Pros
Access to functionality that
normally costs lots of $$
Good for client server or web
applications

Cons
Proprietary languages. Need
tool guru

Open

Source

40+ options - JMeter, OpenSTA,

WebLoad, Grinder
Pros
Good price
Can extend and adapt to your needs
Good for simple tests

Cons
Not as easy to use. Lacks functionality
Only for web based products
Need hardware, bandwidth to generate
load

 Cloud

Based
Rapidly growing offering
BrowserMob, LoadStorm
Pros
Low price
Can easily scale to thousands of users
Can completely eliminate the need for
hardware
Cons
Early in the development phase
Only for web-based products
Analysis is slowly coming up to speed

How do I know what is best for

me?

Understand Your True Needs

Performance,

Load, Stress,

Reliability
All unique areas of testing
Performance - not to find functionality
bugs , but to eliminate system
bottlenecks and establish a baseline
for future regression tests
Takes

a white-box approach. The system is

inspected and monitored "from the inside
out" and from a variety of angles.
Measurements are taken and analyzed and
tuning is done accordingly .

Understand Your True Needs

Load

- process of testing the

system by feeding it the largest
tasks it can operate with

Goals
expose

bugs such as memory

management bugs, memory leaks, buffer
overflows, etc
Ensure that the application meets the
performance baseline established during
performance testing.

Understand Your True Needs

Stress

- one primary objective,

and that is to determine the load
under which a system fails, and
how it fails.

The

main purpose is to make sure

that when the system fails, it
recovers gracefully.

i.e.

no locked sessions, no corrupted

data, if load is removed does it return to
normal working condition

Understand Your True Needs

Reliability

determine
application performance over a
prolonged period of time. Load
can vary between very high and
very low

The

main purpose is to make sure

that the system performance does
not degrade over time.

i.e.

slow memory leaks, stale sessions,

other processes interfering with off hour
activities

Understand Your True Needs

Understand

your user scenarios

Analyze traffic patterns

Google Analytics, application logs
User types
Administrative, buyer, seller, poster,
responder, browser, etc
User activity
Downloading, uploading, purchasing,
saving cart, submitting,
User load
Mix of user type and activity. How many
of each

May

not do load and performance

testing for months/years
Difficult for most companies to have SME

Reach

out to colleagues, user groups,

consultants
Can help reduce the noise
Guide you through the process

Keep Customers Happy

Performance

is

something
customers notice
when it is poor
Dont give
customers a reason
to look at other
options

Questions?
Lawrence Nuanez Senior Consultant
ProtoTest

lnuanez@prototest.com
303-703-1510 ext 109
www.ProtoTest.com