Stress Testing Repository: Websites & Computers

The following is an article on performance and load testing.

"Today Apica Systems, one of the world’s leading load and performance optimization companies, joins the City Cloud service provider program. Apica will deliver cloud application testing and performance monitoring services to all customers. Enterprises as well as smaller companies all have the need to deliver high quality service online. Apica offer City Cloud customers to test and measure performance of their web sites and web applications. Be alerted ( iphone, sms/mail) when your site or web application are slow/ down and also get period based reports of your web sites response times and down time.

451 Group estimates that the European cloud computing market will exceed 4 billion USD in 2013. With the explosion of cloud based computing the need to understand and monitor quality of service increases dramatically. By allowing all parts of the company to monitor if SLAs are met and if a product or solution can scale properly, Apica delivers great business advantages.

The following is an article on performance and load testing.

"Today Apica Systems, one of the world’s leading load and performance optimization companies, joins the City Cloud service provider program. Apica will deliver cloud application testing and performance monitoring services to all customers. Enterprises as well as smaller companies all have the need to deliver high quality service online. Apica offer City Cloud customers to test and measure performance of their web sites and web applications. Be alerted ( iphone, sms/mail) when your site or web application are slow/ down and also get period based reports of your web sites response times and down time.

451 Group estimates that the European cloud computing market will exceed 4 billion USD in 2013. With the explosion of cloud based computing the need to understand and monitor quality of service increases dramatically. By allowing all parts of the company to monitor if SLAs are met and if a product or solution can scale properly, Apica delivers great business advantages.

The following is an article on performance testing.

"The design and performance of your website hinges on crucial details. Just as the smallest mechanical car part can make the difference between winning and losing a race, the performance of your website is critical to meeting your business objectives and creating an optimal experience for your users.
Testronic Labs offers end-to-end quality assurance services that support all of your objectives, from functionality to compatibility with different browsers and devices, performance, security and usability.
In addition, our localisation team can provide translation services and verify the technical and cultural performance of your website in your chosen languages.
With an experienced team of on-site test engineers and translators, and with highly qualified consultants ready to base themselves at your facility, Testronic Labs offers a tailor-made solution to meet your website requirements.
Please talk to us for an informal discussion and a proposal. If performance testing is your concern, why not take a free instant test?"

http://www.testroniclabs.com/services/website-and-software-qa/website-te...

A good article on performance testing.

The following is an article about load and performance testing.

"NRG Global, the leading provider of application load and stress testing software and OpSource, Inc., the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting, today joined forces to offer on-demand testing and monitoring solutions for enterprise-ready cloud solutions. NRG Global and OpSource are at the forefront of the changing landscape of load testing and performance monitoring, providing cloud-based, turn-key packages, ideal for small businesses to large corporations, and consultants or value-added partners. NRG Global will also leverage the OpSource Partner Ecosystem to provide global deployment options for customers as they become available. As part of the partnership, NRG Global becomes a Validated Cloud Solution provider.

The following is an article on load testing.

"Modern software systems ranging from e-commerce websites to telecommunication infrastructures must support concurrent access by hundreds or thousands of users. Many field problems are related to these systems not scaling to field workloads, rather than to feature bugs. To assure the quality of these systems, load testing is a required testing procedure in addition to conventional functional testing procedures like unit and integration testing.

Load testing examines the behavior of a system by simulating hundreds or thousands of users performing tasks at the same time. A load test can last from several hours to a few days. Unlike many other software testing mechanisms that focus on testing the system based on a small number (one or two) of users, load testing examines the system’s behavior based on concurrent access by a large number (thousands or millions) of users.

The following article is about performance testing, written by Marcus Leach.

"Following a survey of global cloud providers, OnApp reports that 49 per cent expect the small business (SMB) sector to drive take-up of cloud services in the next 12 months.

A total of 27 per cent expect the enterprise sector to be their primary source of growth, while just 18 per cent see consumers as their greatest opportunity.

The results are taken from an independent survey of cloud service providers commissioned by OnApp, a leading provider of software for the hosting industry.

The survey found that the most common reasons SMBs adopt cloud computing are the ability it gives them to scale their IT services on demand; being able to pay just for the computing resources they use; the lower cost overall of cloud services; and not having to run their own IT infrastructure.

The study also showed that the strongest uptake of cloud services by businesses is anticipated from web and application developers, with 67 per cent of cloud providers reporting this as the segment expected to drive the greatest growth.

According to respondents already offering hosted cloud services, 42 per cent expected to see growth from the broader IT sector, 39 per cent from financial services and 30 per cent from retail customers.

The following is an article about performance testing.

"Siemens PLM Software has announced the results of performance and scalability tests for its Teamcenter software running on the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 database and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The testing simulated 5,000 simultaneous user sessions -- which, according to the company, can equate to many more potential users in a typical global environment. The tests were conducted in conjunction with Microsoft and with the help and support of HP and Intel.

Siemens PLM Software and Microsoft shared equal responsibility in arranging and conducting the performance tests, which used their latest software offerings. Teamcenter 8.3 was deployed on SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Using HP ProLiant DL580 G7 servers and Intel Xeon X7560 processors, 5,000 concurrent Teamcenter users were simulated using a standard testing methodology executing common product lifecycle management (PLM) actions.

The following is an article about performance testing.

"Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), the leading global provider of converged IP and wireless network test solutions, announces a next-generation version of its award-winning higher speed Ethernet (HSE) test interfaces. Ixia, the leader in HSE testing according to a recent Frost & Sullivan market report, has built upon its Xcellon architecture experience and success to develop the next-generation HSE test interface: Xcellon-Lava™. Xcellon-Lava offers two 40/100 gigabit Ethernet (GE) interfaces in a single-slot configuration, with enhanced capabilities for routing, switching, and application-layer testing. In conjunction with the announcement, Ixia will participate in the panel discussion “Packet Optical Transport/Test and Measurements”at the European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC 2011), in Geneva on Wednesday, September 21 at 12:20 p.m.

HSE use has moved past the basic interoperability stage to incorporation of HSE interfaces into full service core network platforms and application layer devices. Public, small-port-count device and interoperability trials, such as those conducted by the Ethernet Alliance, have proved the viability of the technology. As a result, HSE interfaces are beginning to appear in large numbers – 32 ports and more – in devices such as top-of-rack data center switches.

The following is an article about performance testing.

"Kaminario, a leading provider of high performance all solid-state SAN storage solutions, today announced the availability of a lab validation report and product brief from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) on the recently-announced Kaminario K2-H (hybrid) all solid-state SAN storage system. The K2-H is the first SAN storage solution to allow the freedom to choose a mix of high-speed, solid-state media (DRAM and MLC Flash) to eliminate IO bottlenecks and accelerate the performance of business applications at a price point lower than legacy SAN storage.

The ESG Lab Validation Report, which provides the results of hands-on evaluation and testing of the K2-Hybrid, highlights numerous results, including:

-- Testing with industry standard multi-user database workloads confirmed that K2-Hybrid Flash devices can be used to break through storage performance bottlenecks.

-- Testing with a variety of performance sensitive workloads, showing the K2-Hybrid yielded high levels of performance and throughput that scaled predictably as storage nodes were added.

-- Testing to demonstrate how the K2-Hybrid architecture is fully redundant, highly available and safe.

The ESG Lab Validation Report concludes:

"This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com." It is about stress testing.

" Compuware Corporation CPWR -0.61% , the technology performance company, today introduced the industry's first load testing solution that enables organizations to find and fix performance and scalability problems across the entire application delivery chain -- from the First Mile to the Last Mile. Compuware Gomez 360 degrees Web Load Testing brings together two industry-leading testing solutions -- Gomez Web Load Testing and dynaTrace Test Center Edition -- into one integrated offering.

This new solution accelerates time-to-market by quickly identifying user experience performance problems and isolating the root cause down to the line of code. This saves time and money by enabling collaboration across organizations throughout the application lifecycle and reducing testing iterations.

Building on the dynaTrace acquisition, Gomez 360 degrees Web Load Testing represents the next step in Compuware's application performance management (APM) strategy of building next-generation APM solutions that bring customers greater business value.

The following is an article. written by Ivan Lisitsyn from WAPT pro, about stress testing.

"It is not a typical load testing project when you need to create 100 thousand virtual users. More than half of all web load tests are conducted with just a thousand virtual users or less, because higher load is not actually anticipated on the target web site in production. Note that we are not talking about the number of users per day or hour. Those are concurrent users working with the web site simultaneously, in parallel.

At the same time a huge load mentioned in the title of this article is not a fantasy. Such tests are really required for web sites with growing audience and advanced client functionality. Imagine any web site that delivers customizable user-dependent content updating dynamically: stock quotes, online meetings and chats, monitoring tools, etc. When a user of such web application leaves an open browser page, it keeps refreshing every minute sending a repeating request to the web site. In such case a typical user session may last for hours resulting in a rather big number of concurrent sessions at any time moment.

The following is an article about load testing from Ramon Ray & the Smallbiztechnology.com Team.

"Although Black Friday and the Christmas season are still months away, small businesses shouldn’t be waiting until them to prepare themselves for the mobs that come with the biggest shopping season of the year. Especially with the increase in e-commerce and mobile commerce, small businesses who allow customers to purchase products online ought to be prepare for virtual mobs as well as the actual ones.
Smallbiztechnology.com has sat down with Neustar to discuss the importance of website performance and testing. Neustar offers solutions in website performance and risk management, as well as other online and website services.
How does the testing work?
Small businesses should load test their sites to understand their website’s breaking point. Load testing (using real or virtual browsers) is designed to let you know if your site can handle a certain amount of traffic – if you’re expecting 2,000 visitors for a special promotion or launching a new application, you can ensure your site has the capacity and performance to exceed expectations.
Why should a small business run a few tests?

The following is an article about load testing.

"When will retailers learn? When will marketing departments going to consider the technical ramifications on their campaigns and launches? When will the IT department escalate performance engineering to a high priority? When will we stop reading about sites crashing under heavy volumes of traffic?

Hopefully never! Because these stories are great examples why you need LoadStorm.

Target Inc.'s website crashed yesterday due to special promotion. Apparently, the discount retailer has cut an exclusive arrangement with an Italian luxury designer called Missoni, and it would seem that the online sale of Missoni knitwear generated enough buyers to bring the site down.

I sure would like to know how many concurrent users killed it. Wonder how many requests per second the Target site was handling with less than a 5 second response time?

Can there really be more than a few hundred knitwear aficionados that would hold Missoni goods in such high esteem? What are the odds that those few hundred would all be anxiously awaiting the online sale and access the site simultaneously?

Perhaps it was 5,000 or 50,000. The result is the same - lost revenue, bad press, unhappy customers, and brand devaluation.

The following is an article about load testing.

"Load testing requirements for web sites and web applications differ significantly depending on the expected number of concurrent users, number of page requests per second, amount of transferred data, complexity of virtual user sessions and the technologies requiring specific support.

To address all the possible cases we provide a wide range of tools that can be combined to create different environment configurations.

At the same time a plenty of available options may be confusing. To save your time and budget we offer a free consulting service in terms of which we perform the analysis of your testing project and provide recommendations for the optimal software and hardware configuration.

Here are few examples of typical questions that we can answer:
Is the regular version of WAPT sufficient to test my web site?
What benefits do I get with the Pro version in my specific testing project?
Do I need to purchase additional load agent licenses to create the desired load volume?
Is it recommended to use x64 Load Engine(s) instead of Load Agents?
How many agents/engines do I need to purchase and install?
What hardware is recommended to run my test?
Do I need to purchase additional modules to enable support for specific technologies used for the implementation of my web site?

The following is an article about the necessity of load testing.

"Earlier this week, Target’s website crashed due to the high volume of users affiliated with the release of the new Missoni Collection. According to the New York Times Bits Blog, many users, in an attempt to work around the website crash, turned to the mobile site which showed intermittent connectivity due to high volume as well.
As with last spring’s Amazon crash caused by an offer for a ninety-nine cent Lady Gaga album offer, there are lessons to be learned in how to prepare for load caused by peak traffic events especially as end user expectations for online experiences increase.
To better understand real-world best practices on preparing for load, read our whitepaper, “Five Lessons Learned from the 2010 Online Retail Shopping Holiday Season”. The load testing paper, authored by our Professional Services team, looks at customers’ preparation for major traffic events to determine if there were patterns that resulted in success or failure when it came to peak traffic readiness. It details the top 3 common mistakes and the 5 key lessons learned from the most successful retailers, online bankers and others to help you avoid these mistakes."

A good article about load testing.

http://www.facebook.com/GomezAPM

The following is an article about how Target's website crashed.

"Target's (TGT) newly redesigned website crashed Tuesday under a fashionista traffic load that topped Black Friday, showing how vulnerable retailers can be if technically unprepared. Once the rush started just 7% of visit attempts likely made it through to Target's home page all day, Internet performance monitor Keynote Systems (KEYN) now estimates.

As soon as Italian fashion house Missoni's limited-edition line for Target debuted on the retailer's site, online shoppers went after it.

Many target.com visitors Tuesday looking for Missoni fashions (left) instead got the site's 'faildog' message. View Enlarged Image

"Unprecedented" is how Target spokeswoman Courtney Foster described the clamor.

Missoni is known for making zigzag knits, and that's exactly what Target traffic looked like as its Web prowess unraveled Tuesday.

"Right around 8 a.m. Eastern Time there's just this huge spike," said Dave Karow, senior product manager at Internet and mobile cloud-monitoring firm Keynote Systems. "The base page was taking over 30 seconds to come back to the browser — it usually takes just a fraction of a second."

Many shoppers Tuesday, and some into Wednesday, never got to the home page.

The following is an article on load testing by CloudTweaks.com.

"Starting today you can run Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows SQL Server Standard 2008 R2 on Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU instances for Amazon EC2. Cluster Compute Instances provide customers with high CPU capability within a high bandwidth, low latency network for IO intensive computing. Cluster GPU instances allow customers to additionally take advantage of NVidia Tesla GPUs for general purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing using the CUDA or OpenCL programming models. A number of customers with database workloads and applications in areas such as media processing, rendering, and computational finance, have expressed interest in running Microsoft Windows Server on the most powerful Amazon EC2 instances. Starting today, customers can run applications on Microsoft Windows Server across all Amazon EC2 instance types.

Amazon EC2 Running Microsoft Windows Server & SQL Server

SORTIT has a good article about load testing. The following is a press release from Web Business Applications.

"Many IT departments have invested in implementing management systems to monitor availability of their IT infrastructure and applications, as well as in some cases, solutions to monitor server and network performance.
These are not wasted investments, but many still find the performance and availability that the end-user or customer complains about experiencing is not being picked up by these management systems, which makes it very difficult to fix and improve.
The good news is that there are solutions in the market that can provide organisations with visibility of the quality of experience from an end-user perspective.
Pre-production
First, we advise that companies should look at load-testing new or changed applications before they are put into production for business and customers to use.
The concept is to test the application performance by loading it with the anticipated amount of concurrent users doing transactions. HP LoadRunner is a market leader in this space, and we would highly recommend it. Many companies in SA make use of HP LoadRunner.
Production
In production, many factors can affect the performance that customers and end-users experience.

The following is an article about performance testing from virtusa.com

"It’s rare for any major application or website to go live without going through performance testing. It’s an extremely important activity that requires effective planning and execution. Based on our experience in implementing web applications including websites for global clients, we believe a well-planned approach to testing new web applications goes a long way in ensuring enhanced user experience. Below are 10 tips for planning and preparing for performance testing of a new website or a web application.

Focus on performance – Performance should be integrated into the design from the very start of the new web application project rather than an afterthought. Performance testing should not be considered a one-time activity.
Identify key pages to test – It’s not always possible to test every page, so it’s important to select the pages that are expected to have the highest hit rates. The IT or marketing departments usually have the web analytics stats for the site and will be able to provide information on the sections of the site that receive the most traffic.

The following is an article about performance testing.

"Apica, a leading load testing and performance-monitoring provider for cloud and mobile applications, today announced a partnership with Atex, a leading UK-based software company selling solutions for media-rich industries. According to the terms of the new agreement, Apica's highly effective application performance testing and monitoring technologies will be available to Atex's more than 1,000 media customers that use its content management and advertising solutions to streamline operations and optimize digital strategies.

Apica's solutions test, monitor and optimize web, cloud and mobile applications, giving businesses a true understanding of how those applications perform. Failure to deliver performance in an application will have a significant impact on the business. Testing applications both prior to deployment and after launch are critical to ensure uptime and optimal performance levels.