All around the world, Cyara’s global Professional Services team has been busy running load tests. And regardless of the customer or the region, some things are common with these tests.
Today, we’re sharing a few details about types of load testing because, as Sir Francis Bacon once wisely said, “knowledge itself is power.”
First-Time Load Tests
Initially most customers engage with Cyara for a load test because they view the test as the final green light to validate that their code changes are ready for prime time. It’s common for customers to expect that their first load test will be error free. What actually happens, however, is that the first load test uncovers an initial “punch list” of defects and performance issues. Our team has yet to run an initial load test that didn’t uncover issues.
Annual Load Tests
One customer that we have worked with over a number of years is a leading retailer of computers and mobile devices. This customer runs load tests every year over their entire worldwide infrastructure. This ensures that minor changes that have occurred during the year don’t impact their busy season when delivering great customer service is most important to them.
We’re still in the process of testing their infrastructure. We were surprised that the first two sites we tested had very different outcomes. The first site ran through the test flawlessly and showed very good results. The second site was also expected to be flawless since this site runs the same infrastructure as the first site and the concurrent ports were also the same as in the first site. Even so, issues were discovered and resolved. This illustrates the point that whether it’s your first test or one of many, load tests commonly uncover unexpected issues. Commenting on the differences in the two sites, the customer said, “That’s why we load test! It’s the only way to find issues before they impact our customers.”
At Cyara, the common experience we want to drive home to our customers is that testing early and across your infrastructure ensures your customers get the experience you’ve designed. We’re getting there, one load test at a time.
Find out more about Cyara Load Testing and let us know if we can help with your project!