Systems never pass the first test
Out of our entire list of services customers, only a handful have satisfied their performance goals on the first test. Of those, all but one had been through a performance testing campaign with us in the previous year. If this is the first time for your project or your organization to undertake performance testing, you are virtually guaranteed to fail the first test.
There is a large list of things that can go wrong with modern web systems – firewalls, load balancers, databases, web servers and, of course, the code. One setting buried deep in an Apache config file can make or break your scalability. If you plan for multiple load testing iterations starting early in the development process, those kinks can all be worked out with time to spare. But if you plan the first test for the day before go-live, you are headed for disaster!
Chris Merrill, Chief Engineer