Wanna Load Test? Here’s How….

I’ve never felt the need to load test any of my apps, because I never felt like they’d receive enough traffic to make a difference in performance.

As time has passed, my apps have grown just a little larger, my visits have increased, and I now work for a company which receives a frickin’ TON of visits every day. It’s time to load test!

Yesterday, I was perusing the latest CF 8 Web Application Construction Kit, by Ben Forta et al, and I ran across a chapter on high-availability sites. In this chapter, it mentioned a tool called WebLoad (www.webload.org).

WebLoad has a free tool that lets you load test your applications. Now, I’m am NOT a load testing expert, and I just started yesterday, but that’s what I loved about this tool. Within 15 minutes, I was load testing my apps. It was too easy! 

Here’s the quickstart guide, which I did not even use to get everything setup.

Here’s what I did:

1. Install the software (duhhhhh….)

2. Open up the IDE and create a new project. Click the record button and this mofo will record all of your clicks and form submissions. How cool is that!! It’s all called an “Agenda”

Click the record button (Inside the red square)

3. Stop recording.

Stop recording, then check out the coolness...

4. Save it as a WebLOAD project file, which will be located in your sessions directory by default.

5. Open up your WebLOAD console.

6. Create a new template using the wizard.

7. Choose “Single Agenda”.

8. Now, Choose that agenda project  you just saved in step 4.

9.  This part was just a little tricky for me. I double-clicked my computer name. It opens a linear dialog box where you can set some parameters. Reduce the total time to 3-5 minutes or so, just for testing. Click “Append”.

10. Click + beside your computer name to expand the times. Select the row with 00 days. Click delete.

11. Click Next, Finish, save the template, and you’re ready to let’er rip!

When it’s done, you’ll see cool *hit like this!

Graph View - My god, I think I just had an orgasm!

Spreadsheet view

Now, if someone could just tell me how to analyze these numbers exactly, I’d be a happy camper.

There’s so much more than I’ve just shown you, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Have fun load testing!