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Agile performance testing
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Andreas Bjärlestam
March 30, 2016
Programming
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110
Agile performance testing
Agile performance testing with Amazon AWS, tmux and siege
Andreas Bjärlestam
March 30, 2016
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Transcript
Understanding your system Andreas Bjärlestam! 2016-03-30! _____ .__.__ / _
\ ____ |__| | ____ / /_\ \ / ___\| | | _/ __ \ / | \/ /_/ > | |_\ ___/ \____|__ /\___ /|__|____/\___ > \//_____/ \/ _____ ______ ____________/ ____\___________ _____ _____ ____ ____ ____ \____ \_/ __ \_ __ \ __\/ _ \_ __ \/ \\__ \ / \_/ ___\/ __ \ | |_> > ___/| | \/| | ( <_> ) | \/ Y Y \/ __ \| | \ \__\ ___/ | __/ \___ >__| |__| \____/|__| |__|_| (____ /___| /\___ >___ > |__| \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ __ __ .__ _/ |_ ____ _______/ |_|__| ____ ____ \ __\/ __ \ / ___/\ __\ |/ \ / ___\ | | \ ___/ \___ \ | | | | | \/ /_/ > |__| \___ >____ > |__| |__|___| /\___ / \/ \/ \//_____/
Do you know on top of your head: • How
many req/s your system can handle? • What response >me it has? • How it scales? • What the bo@lenecks are? • How stable it is over >me?
Many s>ll do big bang performance tes>ng
Stop seeing performance tests as verifica>on It should be an
integrated part of your development cycle Con>nuously analyze your system
You should do it all the >me!
I’m lazy, so performance tes>ng must be quick and simple
isola>on
Your test client should do nothing but loadtes>ng, no interference
Amazon AWS + tmux = win!
You can leave it on and come back to check
every now and then
Combine with monitoring: Newrelic Kibana Graphite
> sudo yum install siege
> siege -c10 -t30s -d1 -i -f urls.txt
siege • Quick and simple • Instant visual feedback •
Good summary of most important metrics • Good enough for most scenarios = You can work in quick itera>ons
Create a Traffic Model
Your best guess of how the system will be used
When replacing a system Get access logs from the old
system Analyze which parts of the system that generate the most load Plot them over >me to get a feeling for peaks and average load
If you replay access logs against your system with siege
you can gain a lot of insights and find problems like unhandled urls, unnecessary redirects etc
Build a urls.txt file Based on traffic model Fill a
file with urls that represent your expected traffic, one url per line Think about the propor>ons of different types of urls
Build a urls.txt file Expec>ng broad traffic -> many urls
Expec>ng narrow traffic -> not so many
Build a urls.txt file h@p://example.com h@p://example.com/user/s>na h@p://example.com/user/olof h@p://example.com/user/sven h@p://example.com/user/siv h@p://example.com/user/ellen
h@p://example.com/country/sweden h@p://example.com/country/norway
Build a urls.txt file curl cut jq grep etc are
your friends
Build a urls.txt file You can send POST as well
h@p://example.com/user/s>na POST age=23 h@p://example.com/user/s>na POST a=1&b=2 h@p://example.com/user/s>na POST <./s>na.txt
Finding the system limits
10 req/s OK 100 req/s OK 500 req/s Slooow 300
req/s OK
Scale up with more CPU or processors and try again
Does it scale linearly?
This is a good >me to think about the bo@lenecks
of your system I/O CPU Sync / Async
Adjust and try again
Keep an eye on system metrics Response >me CPU load
Memory usage Error rates etc
Stability tes>ng
Start a linux machine on AWS Set up a session
with tmux Start siege Leave it running
> siege -c10 -t24h -i -d1 -f urls.txt
Put your system under con>nuous load from your first commit
Keep an eye on system metrics every now and then
Good to know: siege counts error responses and will stop
if it encounters more than 1024 errors
TLDR Stop doing performance tests like its 1999 Put your
system under load from day 1 Run tests interac>vely, be crea>ve Gain understanding AWS + tmux + siege is awesome!
tmux cheat sheet > tmux new -s loadtest starts a
new session named loadtest ctrl-b + d exits session > tmux list-sessions lists all current sessions > tmux a@ach -t loadtest a@aches to the session named loadtest
If siege does not fit your use case You could
try - gatling - locust - wrk They are bigger (more complex) hammers