Baseline and comparative performance measures

Using the previous tools, conduct the tests of your systems that can be duplicated later. You'll want to know how they perform right out of the box and how they perform under normal load. Store these results as baseline measures. Then, if you or your users suspect that there are performance problems, you can run the exact same tests and compare them against the baselines. You will then have an easier time determining if there is a problem and where that problem may be.

As your deployment grows, these comparative measurements will help you determine how quickly your systems are expanding, which can help you plan well in advance for any scale-out operations.