Load Testing Blog
Support added for cloud engines in 5 more Amazon AWS EC2 regions
Load Tester now has support for the 4 newest AWS regions: Ohio, Sao Paulo, Frankfurt, Seoul and Mumbai.
Starting with the 6.6.14774 release, you will now be able to generate load from these regions using our built-in cloud engine support. You’ll need an AWS account, of course.
Unfortunately, not all of the new regions support the instance sizes that Load Tester supports:
Mumbai is missing m3.medium and c3.large
Sao Paulo is missing m3.medium and c3.large
Ohio is missing m3.medium and t2.micro
Unfortunately, m3.medium is the size used by default in Load Tester, when starting cloud engines manually or automatically. So some care is required when using … Continue reading »
Installing Load Testing Software
Network setups and application designs vary from user to user and deciding how to implement Load Tester can be difficult. By understanding how Load Tester™ may be deployed within various environments, you’ll be able to more easily test and optimize your systems.
Upgrading repositories from 6.5 to 6.6
I’m more than a little proud that we have been able to keep our repository format backwards-compatible for the entire life of the product, with only a few minor bumps along the road. Unfortunately, that streak has come to an end. Thanks an oversight on my part in reviewing the compatibility of a 3rd-party library, some 6.5 repositories cannot be upgraded to 6.6 without some effort on your part.
TLDR: If you don’t use real-browser testcases, you get a pass – just upgrade as usual. Otherwise, before installing 6.6, open your repositories in 6.5 and delete all replays and load test … Continue reading »
Load Testing with 5,000,000 Concurrent Users
At Web Performance we’ve been running large scale tests for over a decade, the result of constant testing and measurement to make sure the results are valid. As websites get bigger, we’ve had to increase the size of our tests, creating thousands of computers in the cloud to generate up to 5,000,000 concurrent users at last count.
Introducing Web Performance Legion
I want to introduce you to something new: Web Performance Legion. Legion is a new open-source research product. It’s an attempt to create a powerful load testing tool that can handle difficult and or esoteric use cases while still being easy-to-understand at its core. It’s still in the early phases of development, but if you happen to love working with Node, or you need to test a complex RESTful API, Legion might be the tool for you.
Instant Load Engines Retired
Beginning with the 6.6 release, we will no longer be producing our Instant Load Engines ISOs.
Testing Popup Windows
We often receive questions about how Load Tester handles popup windows. In this post, I’ll describe how Load Tester handles these elements and provide a sample recording.
How does Load Tester Handle Popups?
Users do not regularly encounter popups. As a result, these windows may appear to function differently from regular browser windows.
However, when recording using a virtual browser, Load Tester records any calls to the server. Replaying a recording or running a test will replay those calls whether issued from a normal browser window or a popup.
NOTE: The following method is only applicable to “Virtual Browser” recordings.
Recording a Popup Window
1. On the … Continue reading »
Generating Load from Multiple Regions – Load Tester 6.6
Load Tester’s cloud load generation feature includes the ability to use datacenters located in different geographical regions.
This post contains detailed steps for adding an Amazon EC2 account and for running a new test configuration. These instructions apply to Web Performance Load Tester 6.6 and up. For Load Tester 6.5 and earlier, see Generating Load from Multiple Countries – Load Tester 6.5.
Why Load Test From Multiple Regions?
Generating load from different regions enables more realistic load tests. Rather than using just local datacenters, tests can simulate traffic from all over the world rather than just local datacenters.
This feature also allows testing … Continue reading »
Generating Load from Multiple Regions – Load Tester 6.5
Load Tester’s cloud load generation feature includes the ability to use datacenters located in different geographical regions.
This post contains detailed steps for adding an Amazon EC2 account and for running a new test configuration. These instructions apply to Web Performance Load Tester 6.5 and earlier. For Load Tester 6.6 and up, see Generating Load from Multiple Countries – Load Tester 6.6.
Why Load Test From Multiple Regions?
Generating load from different regions enables more realistic load tests. Rather than using just local datacenters, tests can simulate traffic from all over the world rather than just local datacenters.
This feature also allows testing of … Continue reading »
Load Testing with Microsoft Edge
Last week Microsoft rolled out Windows 10, which includes the new Microsoft Edge web browser. We can hope that Microsoft Edge will leave behind many of the issues that plagued Internet Explorer and deliver a modern browsing experience competitive with what we’ve come to expect from Google Chrome and Firefox.
Currently, Web Performance Tester supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome as it’s three “top-tier” browsers for HTTP capture (virtual browser) testing and Google Chrome as the only supported browser for web driver (real browser) testing. But you can record and run load tests with Microsoft Edge today, and … Continue reading »