Advanced load testing
In order to be able to predict capacity, we need to run load tests. In Chapter 13, 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 for testing 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.
OctoPerf is the ideal tool to get us quickly started with advanced testing capability. Let's create an account and see what it can...