Importance of Load Testing and Launch Day
Any application or software that is intended to support many users needs adequate load testing, yet this is still an often forgotten or disregarded step in the development process. With the recent success of Pokemon GO, we are faced with another failure in load testing and server capacity planning. The difference this time is the fierce loyalty to the brand displayed by its fans. But this is not always the case. Let’s take a look at a two major times that initial stress testing issues caused problems for games during launch day.
Diablo III
Activision Blizzard famously released the third installment of it’s action role-playing game in 2012 to disastrous failure. Though the company worked tirelessly to correct the issues, the main problem was that they did not anticipate how many users would be logging in simultaneously and failed to prepare the servers for that instantaneous load at launch. This left players frustrated for days while they devised a working queue system in order to alleviate the issue. The “always online” requirement increased the strain immensely, preventing even those who wanted to play alone instead of in groups to cause additional strain.
Here, like with Pokemon GO, it is the brand itself which saved this game. Players wanted the latest Diablo game, and were willing to put up with issues in the short term. This enthusiasm does not last long, however, which is why immediate resolution is necessary. Though the fact remains that this issue could have been avoided entirely with better load testing.
Simcity 5
EA and Maxis released the latest installment in the city building and management game March 5, 2013. There was a massive amount of excitement from fans at the prospect of managing a city online with multiple users participating in a single region, but skepticism that the “always online” requirement would hamper server performance. Shortly after release and in response to massive server problems, EA limited game functionality in an attempt to reign in the constant crashing and stress. It seemed that the company had failed to stress test their servers at all.
Though a recognizable brand, the lack of significant progress to address the concurrent user issues experienced by SimCity 5 (core features weren’t fully reinstated until June 11th) ultimately forced Maxis to permanently close its doors.
Both examples show that extensive load testing is critical to a successful launch. Even big companies can suffer consequences from poor foresight, despite brand recognition. There are a variety of website load testing tools, both free and paid that can be used to prepare for a launch day and help mitigate potential problems.
Load Testing Helps Avoid Software Catastrophes In the Field
When a software package’s development project has become fairly complete and has all specified functionality, it is time to conduct Load Testing. This is because it is only with a thorough amount of stress testing that a particular build of all the programs in a suite can be certified as being a valid release candidate. This is not the more basic unit testing and overall functionality testing. That is all done well before this final software development step in the Quality Assurance (QA) process.
Remaining Objective in Load Testing
The resource demands on a particular application can never be fully anticipated, so this type of testing thrashes the app until it breaks. If the load level is not high enough for the software to be accepted for release, then it must be fixed. More junior software development output often produces stress testing failures that actually warrant a redesign, losing valuable time. This is why it is so important to value keeping software developers who have many years of experience, not discriminating against them just because they are older. And most importantly, never allow your developers to do the testing. The test engineers must be separate and objective.
Of course, such load testing can only ever attempt to match anticipated worst-case stress conditions with testing that emulates known, logged, real-world situations. This is why no matter how well tested a new software product is, there will be times that unanticipated synergy between apps, apps and the Operating System, and a target app running simultaneously with other commonly present apps, can cause catastrophic failures out in the field. A really well designed and scientifically conducted stress test can alleviate a lot of headaches in this regard.
Stress Testing HIPAA Servers
When stress testing a HIPAA server, test engineers must sanitize the data, removing Protected Health Information (PHI), and standardize the structured test data inputs. It is recommended to have a compliant third party run your load tests if operating under HIPAA regulations. Many HIPAA compliant web hosts offer licensed engineers on-demand to run your testing as outlined here.
Experience + Best-in-Class Load Testing Tools = Success
One of the problems less-experienced software developers often make is trying to have their software stress tested well before it is time. There is no efficiency in that. Nothing will actually mean anything until all the feature set is implemented and there are no interface issues, no obvious performance issues, and the regular regression testing proves it is time. Don’t make that mistake and you won’t be sorry down the proverbial line!
In terms of tools that you can use to perform load testing, you can go two ways: free or paid. One of the most popular tools is Apache JMeter which can be installed on your server in order to perform a load test. If you’re looking for an external tool, Load-View is another option. As to which tool is right for you situation, only you can decide that.
Why Load Testing Matters More Than You Think
Load testing is an important part of running any website. Why is that? Well, there are a variety of reasons for this. The first and most obvious reason is to preserve the user experience and ensure that it stays positive. If your site isn’t ready for a lot of users to hit it, it’s possible that it might be taken down with a big traffic surge, and this can lead to a poor user experience.
Think about it for a moment…there are a lot of reasons why a piece of content can go viral. Maybe it’s related to breaking news, or maybe it provides an answer that a lot of people have been searching for. Either way, it’s important to understand that a lot of different things can go viral and this can lead to a huge influx of traffic to your website. If you haven’t done any load testing before then you really don’t know how much traffic your site can handle. This is a bad thing because when the traffic hits your site it may overload it and cause it to crash. This can lead to frustrated users and a lot of other problems.
So, how does a person prevent this? Well, there are a lot of ways that can be done too. One of the most simple and effective ways to load test a website before you get a big spike in traffic in order to know for sure what the capacity of your server is and how much traffic you can handle, which is sometimes referred to as capacity planning.
Load testing differs from stress testing in that it’s really designed to see how your website performs under an expected load, while stress testing takes that a step further. Stress testing hits your site with a large number of visitors until the site breaks and goes down, at which point you know the breaking point, so-to-speak, of your server and website. Then you can make informed decisions about how to increase server capacity and how to deal with the increased load of website visitors. This is something that’s incredibly hard to do blindly and without the information that a good stress testing or load testing tool can provide.
How to ensure that your Load Tests are Successful
Many institutions run load tests when they want to determine the performance of the WedLogic Applications they are using. However, these companies experience one main problem: they never get the results they need because the load test fails most of the time. Others do not even complete the load tests.
There are some companies that have been running and failing load tests for a very long time. This happens mostly because of two reasons. The first reason is because the companies failed to create the load generations scripts in the right way. The scripts written by the companies assumed that it was a new user all this while. The second reason of failing the load test is because of a wrongly written line in the code. If you identify the problem why you have been failing the test, it will be very easy to make your load tests successful in few days.
Individuals who want to launch their web application successfully should be very keep when emulating production data. It is very important for these individuals to be able to deal with any performance issues as fast as possible. If you want your load tests to always be successful, use those two initiatives:
• First of all, make sure that the load generation scripts are a representative of what your production traffic looks like.
• It is also crucial to identify and solve any issues that are keeping the load tests from becoming successful.
The load test can be complex or simple. The simple test is done by running a script from your desktop against the WebLogic application (and to run the test, you can also use these application monitoring tools). When this is accomplished, the individual records the results and then determines the pass or fail for the effort. This low volume test is instrumental in helping the owners of the application to feel comfortable when preparing to launch the application.
The complex applications need bigger and more complicated procedures. These high volume applications should always be written and also architected for the bigger load. When dealing with these applications, companies get a comprehensive test plan. For a company, the load test cost might be millions of dollars.
The generation tools used in the tests are also different. They can range from the simple request browser to the complex load-testing tools that have different controllers and agents. It is important for companies to get the right generation tools so that they can get the correct results.
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