How to Master Cloud Performance Testing

Developing a well-crafted and responsive software application can be challenging for developers and testers alike. To ensure the application performs and delivers the desired functionalities, it’s essential to run it through rigorous testing. Performance testing (including stress testing and load testing) and unit testing are some of the most popular testing types that evaluate an application’s functionality, performance, and response to load.

Performance testing refers to the step of the QA process that determines an application’s stability and behavior under various loads. As organizations continue to adapt the cloud model for accelerating and improving their operations, performance testing in the cloud has also become pivotal to the success of an application’s testing procedure and, as a result, for quality deliveries.

In this blog, let us explore why performance testing in the cloud has grown in popularity and why it has become a trustworthy choice for organizations worldwide and across industries.

What is Cloud Performance Testing?

Cloud performance testing simply refers to the performance testing within the cloud infrastructure. Performance testing in the cloud addresses the challenges and dependencies that many organizations face while doing on-premise performance testing. 

Conducting performance testing in the cloud involves establishing a testing environment within the on-demand cloud infrastructure. It also reduces the hardware resources overhead that’s involved with on-premise testing.

Why is Performance Testing in the Cloud Important?

Cloud-based performance testing ensures that teams worry less about the configuration of testing infrastructure and focus more on building testing strategies. Employing a cloud-based testing tool ultimately simplifies the testing process as the platform takes care of tasks such as configuring the testing architecture, installation setup, and software maintenance.

Modern development teams tend to follow the agile scrum model, which enables them to deliver code at a rapid pace in iterative sprints. This means that the QA team must be able to keep up with the rapid progress of the development team. Or, that developers perform the testing themselves, as is the case in some organizations. Performance testing in the cloud eliminates organizational friction and empowers testers to ensure the quick delivery of a high-quality software product.

Benefits of Performance Testing in the Cloud

Let us explore the main advantages of performance testing in the cloud.

1. Scalability

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of performance testing in the cloud is the ability to simulate countless real-world users and imply increasingly heavy loads to assess the application thoroughly. This is because the cloud-based model allows the QA team to increase the computing load and resources per their requirements. Allocation is easy and rapid.

Comparatively, in an on-premise testing environment, scaling up the user requests would mean involving more hardware and software resources. This necessarily means that you will be responsible for setting up the infrastructure consisting of machines that are required to generate load for simulating numerous users. It also means that the team needs to handle the hardware upgrade costs and time for the entire infrastructure as well. With cloud-based testing, all these hassles are simply transferred to the service provider.

2. Geographical Versatility

With on-premises testing, your servers are probably in a limited number of locations and therefore testers are restricted in their ability to test across various geographical locations. This creates a wide gap in performance testing as the QA team is unable to accurately evaluate the application’s response to simulated users from different regions. 

Cloud-based performance testing, on the other hand, allows the simulation of virtual users across a wide variety of geographical locations. This is due to the fact that cloud data centers are located globally and thus, performance testing in the cloud can help you out in testing an application’s response and behavior when prompted to load from different regions. This aspect is very important for the performance testing of web applications that are certain to be accessed by users across the globe.

3. Cost-Effectiveness 

On-premise performance testing mechanisms may require testers and organizations to invest in hardware and software resources in order to be able to simulate heavy loads. When this cost is combined with the server and infrastructure costs, it becomes a massive testing overhead. 

Performance testing in the cloud enables organizations to get rid of these expenses. Cloud testing service providers enable users to pay just for the computing resources that are utilized during testing. With a pay-per-use model in adoption, cloud-based testing tools become a go-to option for organizations to reduce unnecessary costs. Moreover, there is no need to worry about maintenance costs for hardware resources as well.

4) All-Inclusive and Thorough Testing

Cloud performance testing allows teams to test applications across different platforms, devices, browsers, and operating systems in one go. What would have been a time-consuming and hectic routine for the QA team in an on-premise testing environment, becomes a streamlined and hassle-free process in the cloud.

Most cloud-based testing platforms offer standardized software with a diverse range of capabilities that surpass the functionalities offered by on-premise testing tools. Cloud-based testing tools are well-equipped with prominent features such as detailed diagnostics and much more that ultimately contribute to a more efficient testing procedure and a robust testing cycle.

5) Improved Collaboration

Cloud-based performance testing also enables dev and QA teams to improve collaboration between them. Testing in the cloud environment enables testers to automate a lot of testing processes and also integrate test environments with DevOps tools to incorporate quick feedback.

6) Reduced Testing Overhead

The universality of cloud computing has compelled the majority of QA teams to utilize cloud-based testing environments instead of traditional on-premise environments. Conventional on-premise performance testing not only consumes a lot of time but also brings a lot of additional overhead in terms of software and hardware resources. 

These factors ultimately affect the overall productivity of the testing team as resource limitations force teams to struggle in testing applications against all desired criteria of performance. 

7) Eliminates the Need for a Configuration Support Team

Investing in a cloud-based testing architecture also means that your skilled resources can spend more time working on valuable action items such as testing automation strategies instead of indulging in tasks such as handling the configuration of test servers, over-seeing hardware, and software updates, and maintaining the entire testing infrastructure. In a cloud-based environment, all these tasks are pre-configured and managed by the provider.

Cloud Performance Testing Vs On-Premise Performance Testing

To sum things up, on-premise performance testing brings a lot of additional overhead for organizations not just in terms of resource utilization but also in terms of infrastructure costs and time spent on maintaining the software and hardware resources. Cloud-based performance testing eliminates these obstacles and ensures a cost-effective, scalable, and reliable testing cycle. 

With cloud-based testing, you can test your applications against a large number of geographically dispersed virtual users. Moreover, a cloud-based testing environment allows you to scale your resources up and down as per your requirements and needs. Maintaining the testing servers, configuring the infrastructure, and taking care of necessary software updates - All of these hassles also become the responsibility of the service provider. In a nutshell, cloud-based performance testing boosts the efficiency of your testing process and minimizes the costs and effort involved with conducting performance testing.

Top Cloud Performance Testing Tools

SOASTA CloudTest

SOASTA provides support for different types of testing including performance testing, load testing, and functional testing. CloudTest provides the ability to simulate millions of concurrent users that are scattered over different geographical locations. This feature can be used when you need to test an application’s response under a heavy and geographically dispersed load. 

The tool provides real-time analytics and reporting. 

AppThwack

Another popular option when employing cloud-based testing tools is AppThwack, which is a comprehensive cloud-based testing platform. This feature-packed tool is commonly used for testing web applications, iOS apps, and Android apps on different devices. AppThwack also offers integrations with several different automation platforms for instance Calabash, Espresso, JUnit, and more. 

Another added benefit of using AppThwack is its REST API support which allows you to test through different clients. WebThwack’s built-in frameworks eliminate the effort that’s required in writing and maintaining manual test scripts. Since its acquisition by Amazon in 2015, AppThwack’s testing services are being provided under a different name “AWS Device Farm”.

App Center Test By Visual Studio

App Center Test is an add-on tool available for Visual Studio and serves as a cloud-based testing service for hybrid and native mobile applications. Previously known as Xamarin Test Cloud, the tool is capable of executing tests over hundreds of operating systems and devices hosted in Microsoft’s data center. App Center provides the capability to store test results for the last six months, including screenshots, logs, and media assets. 

App Center Test offers support for various popular frameworks such as Espresso, Calabash, and more. With this tool, users can quickly attain test results and view stack traces and logs for failed test cases. App Center Test offers a free trial as well as a cost-effective pricing structure for its paid tier plan.

BlazeMeter

BlazeMeter is a cloud performance testing platform that enables teams to test continuously at scale. One of the striking aspects of this feature-rich tool is its compatibility with a lot of other testing tools such as Gatling, Selenium, JMeter, and Locust.

BlazeMeter’s platform comprises a user-intuitive and simplified UI that helps you get started with running performance tests within a few minutes. As the tool is compatible with JMeter scripts as well, it is a great choice for testers who are already well-versed in using JMeter. Performance testing is all about implying load from various simulated users across different locations and this is where BlazeMeter takes the lead. The tool offers the capability to simulate over two million users from over 50 locations across the globe. 

Comprehensive reporting and real-time analytics are a couple of more innovative features that BlazeMeter offers. Real-time reporting enables you to have a deep insight into the logs, errors, and statistics for each executed test.

Gatling

Another popular tool for conducting performance testing in the cloud is Gatling. With an appealing web interface, Gatling facilitates users by allowing them to conduct a comprehensive performance testing cycle for their applications and identify performance bottlenecks.

Originally written in Scala, Gatling is a powerful testing tool with an advanced architectural design that guarantees optimal performance while conducting performance tests. Gatling tests are written in an immensely clear and human-readable form and therefore, simplify the script creation process. The tool’s compatibility with Continuous Integration platforms and its integration with other popular testing tools such as Jenkins makes it a good choice for testers looking to conduct performance testing.

Locust

Locust is an open-source, simple, and easy-to-use performance testing platform that uses Python as the fundamental scripting language. The tool offers a user-friendly UI and rich visualizations to depict various metrics in real time during performance testing. 

Locust also provides the capability to simulate millions of concurrent users to efficiently test the performance of applications. A properly maintained documentation also adds up to the value of this impressive performance testing tool.

Bottom Line

The significance of performance testing in the successful delivery of a software application is enormous. The cloud platform, based on its global adoption and versatility, is the best testing environment for ensuring smooth testing with dynamic testing features. Low performance and excessive response time for an application is a big turn-off for customers these days as the average attention span continues to diminish day by day. This is where the crucial role of performance testing comes in.

Now that you know all about the importance of performance testing in the cloud, the next step is to choose a comprehensive cloud-based testing platform for your business.

BlazeMeter’s massively scalable performance testing platform is your go-to choice whether you need to perform performance testing, API testing, or functional testing. Built with the motto of delivering the best customer experience, Blazemeter comprises features that enable you to perform performance testing for all kinds of applications including web apps, mobile apps, APIs, and microservices. 

Not only that, Blazemeter tops it up with an excessively intuitive user interface as well as advanced-level analytics. Real-time reporting and the flexible compatibility with Jenkins undoubtedly make it the top choice of business owners looking to improve the performance of their applications today. 

Are you in search of a cloud performance testing tool that matches your requirements? Try performance testing with BlazeMeter with a free trial today.

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