We’re hard at work here in the Webmetrics group preparing for the upcoming application load testing season. I quickly wanted to share with you a sneak preview of a White Paper we are working on related to the hundreds of load tests we have executed for our customers over the past several years. The purpose of the paper is to quantify the actual benefit load testing provides by comparing the key performance indicators before and after a test, as well as what problems were uncovered during the test. We are also looking for what specific types of problems (web server, database, etc.) an external load test is likely to uncover for a given application.
So far the preliminary results we have tabulated are very interesting and informative. As we look back through the data, we are finding that time and again load testing consistently uncovers a variety of pre-production problems such as load balancer misconfiguration, content issues, database performance problems and general capacity-related problems. As we haven’t finished crunching all the numbers yet, I can’t yet share with you any specific data points, but the data shows the importance and real benefit of external load testing prior to application launch across all types and sizes of businesses. We are hoping that this White Paper will help you to definitively answer the oft-asked question in IT departments: “Why don’t we just spend more money on hardware, rather than extensive application and load testing?” This question often comes up as we talk with our customers, and our historical data will clearly show that there are huge performance benefits that can be uncovered through iterative load testing that will help you considerably reduce your overall hardware costs as you scale.
We are looking forward to publishing this White Paper in the coming months and sharing the results with you and the larger performance and testing community.
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