CloudTest Lite by SOASTA Crash Course 103
CloudTest Lite by SOASTA Crash Course 103
Introduction
Welcome lucky uTester! In this crash course, you'll receive a short introduction to SOASTA CloudTest Lite. In this final installment, this crash course will focus is on composing a load test, and playing a load test.
This crash course is targeted at individuals familiar with other proprietary or open source tools for developing and executing load/performance tests. In addition to some experience in load/performance testing, experience with web-based applications based on the underlying HTTP request/response message structure will be beneficial.
At the end of the course, you should be familiarized with the different tests you can perform with CloudTest as well as its terminology. You should be able to record simple scenario and run it to analyze results using customized dashboards. It should get you going for more fun in the performance testing world! It's a practice getting more and more importance in the software testing industry, with all these slow websites, sometime crashing ... It can get frustrating! Performance Engineers play a very important role nowadays to reach excellent user experience.
Composing a Load Test
With one or more test clips, a load test simulating many users can be built quickly using one or more of the methods below.
We're going to use the composition you've created earlier in the following steps
1. Navigate to Central > Test Compositions.
2. Locate the test composition saved previously in the Test Compositions list.
The test composition opens in the Composition Editor. The first test clip occupies Track 1.
3. In the Composition Builder tab in the lower panel, locate and select another clip you might have created.
4. Drag the test clip into the open workspace just below Track 1.
The clip is added to a new Track 2.
Click Save in the Composition Editor toolbar, you're ready to apply virtual users to your track.
Applying Virtual Users
SOASTA CloudTest uses parallel repeats per track as the basis for estimating virtual users. Parallel repeats fire the track concurrently, or in parallel, at the specified time for the same integer. Setting on the test clip itself does not add to the calculation for a given composition’s virtual users.
Although the example composition has only two clips, and uses very low numbers of users, real-world tests can easily include thousands of users using that one clip with many virtual users. Tests of great complexity can also be built quickly using multiple test clips and virtual users.
IMPORTANT: Recording from a host is fairly benign, however, once you add virtual users and run a test against that same host your test can easily be perceived by that host as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. For the sample test in this tutorial, we will be using very low numbers of virtual users. SOASTA CloudTest is capable of much higher numbers and tests of great complexity with multiple user scenarios, clips, and tracks.
For this course, SOASTA recommends a low number of track repeats (no more than five total virtual users). The Composition Editor displays the current number of Total Virtual Users at the top of the Track column.
1. In the Composition Editor, click the blue area on the left labeled Track 1.
2. Click the Virtual Users icon in Track 1 and enter 3 into the field that appears. Note that this number is very low since this is a tutorial. Real tests use much larger virtual user values. Leave the test clip on this track at its default, 1.
3. Click the Repeats icon on the surface of the second clip on Track 2, and enter 3.
4. Click Save on the Composition Editor toolbar.
Playing a Load test
Setting Play Mode for Load Testing
CloudTest provides play modes that comprise "recommended" settings for both debug (General) and load (Load) testing. General play mode provides verbose logging settings that come at a low overhead in smaller tests. Load play mode omits verbose logging, but captures information to help identify performance bottlenecks in a web application.
1. In the Composition Editor, click the Play Mode drop-down and choose Load.
To examine the details of Load play mode, click the Properties tab in the Composition Editor lower panel, and then select the Composition node in the Properties list and keep the General tab in display.
Adding the Load Test Summary Dashboard
In the following steps, add a second dashboard, the Load Test Summary, to the test composition. This dashboard is suitable for larger tests while in Load play mode.
Note: The Result Details Dashboard’s detailed information is only available if you’ve run a test with the “general” test mode. This mode is not recommended for large load tests—only for test development. No more than five virtual users should be run in General mode.
1. To add a dashboard, click the Play tab in the top right of the Composition Editor.
2. Click the Plus icon to the right of the Result Details dashboard. The New or Existing Dashboard wizard appears.
3. Select Use an Existing Dashboard, and then select Load Test Summary from the System Dashboards list.
4. Click the right green arrow. The dashboard is added to the Composition Editor tab. The data from the last result for the test composition populates the widgets in the dashboard.
5. Click Play in the Composition Editor toolbar.
While the test composition plays, the Fundamentals widget displays various animation effects indicating incoming data. Mouse over and click any item in the Average Response Time or Send Rate charts to view detail information.
To zoom on a region of any chart, click-and-drag a rectangle. This zooms in on the selected chart AND all the other charts in the dashboard. The timestamps paired to make this deep investigation of the data possible. Double-click to un-zoom the chart.
Don't hesitate to click on the Widget Selection panel button!
It gives you access to all the available widgets. Don't hesitate to drag and drop new widgets into your dashboard!
You can also drag and drop widgets on top of each other to combine or correlate them. Very useful to pinpoint bottleneck and performance problems.
Next steps
If you've reached the end of this course, you're probably hungry for more! After all, you have only scratched the surface of Cloud Test Lite and the world of performance testing! We haven't covered validation, parameterization, session template (a very efficient approach to correlation) etc. but there is plenty of great resources on the SOASTA website to help you go deeper!
Demo about analysitcs and dashboard
CloudTest Load Testing Tutorial