Software testers and developers often get lulled by a misleading sense of security. This often happens as performance and features pass the expectation level during pre-production, but fails in production when presented to the real users.
Moreover, when you are performing load testing for your organization, you may not be replicating the real world environment of your end users. Realism while performing load testing is extremely important, as it helps in overcoming performance related issues in production. An unrealistic load testing can lead to revenue loss and brand damage.
However, the best solution to get out of such situation is to try cloud-based load testing. Cloud-based load testing offers various advantages, provided they are performed using adept tools.
An effective cloud based load testing tool must have the following features:
Integration
The ability to integrate with cloud platforms is a key factor. However, you might have to handle the situation manually, if your solution doesn’t get integrated with the cloud platform. Integration eases and speeds up the speed required to use the cloud infrastructure.
Realistic Tests
Cloud-based testing is the most realistic in many ways; however, it requires more of bandwidth constraint experienced by real users. The tool must include:
- Virtual Networks: Testing under varying network condition is very important, especially considering bandwidth, latency, and packet loss
- Parallel Requests: Parallel request with more connections and lengthy response time can help in producing the most realistic performance test
Unified Lab Testing
Lab testing in no way should be replaced by cloud testing. Instead, there should be a single solution, where the scripts can be reused for both cloud testing and load testing. Such a feature helps save a lot of time and effort and proves to be lower in cost as well.
Monitoring and Reporting
Once the test is created and ran, you need to analyze the application behavior under load. This ensures that the app meets the requirements that are predetermined. With an adept cloud testing tool you can analyze the data and create actionable reports. In addition, a complete monitoring system would always be an added advantage.
Web Technologies
A built-in help for the technology you are using is always helpful in the tool. This ensures effective testing and improves the scale and realism of load testing.
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