Advanced load testing

In order to be able to predict capacity, we need to run load tests. In Chapter 11, Highly-Available Cloud Infrastructure on AWS, I discussed a simple load testing technique of just sending a bunch of web requests to a server. In a relative comparison scenario, this works fine to test raw power. However, actual users generate dozens of requests at varying intervals, while they navigate your website resulting in a wide-variety of API calls to your backend server.

We must be able to model virtual users and unleash a whole bunch of them on our servers to find the breaking point of our server. OctoPerf is an easy-to-use service to execute such load tests, and it's located at https://octoperf.com. OctoPerf offers a free-tier that allows for 50 concurrent users/test over unlimited test runs with two load generators:

1. Create an OctoPerf account

2. Login and...