Do you know what the maximum load is your application can handle? How does your platform react during peak traffic? By performing a stress test you get insight into the performance limits of your application or platform.
What is a stress test?
A stress test will show you how your application reacts under an increasing load and what the maximum capacity of your application is. A stress test is often deployed to test a newly developed application, but also when there has been a change in the data centre, hardware or operating system. It is important then to check whether your system is still able to withstand the expected peak load. After all, most changes will have an impact on performances.
What do we do during a stress test?
When carrying out a stress test we simulate a real-world situation in a safe environment. In that we simulate the users’ behaviour at maximum (peak) load. We do that, for example, on your most popular pages, in frequently used transactions or heavy functionalities. By steadily increasing the pressure, we are able to pinpoint the limits of your system and we identify exactly where in the chain the bottlenecks can be found.
During the stress test we not only monitor the response times, but also the vitals of your infrastructure. In addition, we keep in contact with your engineers so that we are able to make adjustments where necessary, as well allowing issues to be diagnosed straight away.
What do you get after a stress test?
The report following the stress test provides a clear indication of how many users or transactions your system can process simultaneously without faults or excessive response times. If you deploy a stress test in order to test the capacity of your system after that has been scaled up, or to optimise the performance, then we can tell you which infrastructure components or configurations will also require changing. In this way you are able to expand your system capacity with a minimum investment and at the same time ensure that the performance is safeguarded under all circumstances.