What do we need to know to become an expert in performance testing?

1. It is important to know the basics of functional testing.


2. Experience of automated testing is desirable but not mandatory.


3. Very helpful to have administration experience (knowledge of protocols, the possibility of self-tuning system, etc.).


4. One must learn to fully understand the application architecture.


5. An analytical mind and knowledge of mathematics will be needed to analyze the test results are often presented in the form of complex graphs and tables.

But to know the application source code is not necessarily - an expert on performance testing would not directly interact with it.
If you have no specialist, and you think about someone requested to undertake a load test - the programmer or no experience in this business functional testers - a charge it to someone who exhibits this activity the most interest and who have the necessary skills and addiction, as well as understanding the terminology, or at least a strong desire to all this (alone) to learn.
By the way, to begin the study of load testing you can study vocabulary (hit, transaction per load, response time, and other things that you can see on the screen in an attempt to organize its first launches of the performance test).
How to Organize a Test Environment

1. It is best to test on a system identical to the one that will work in real applications. It is not allowed to scale the result.


2. Each element of the system (database, application server, load generator, which takes a lot of resources, etc.) is desirable to install on a separate machine. In this way, it will be much easier to define - which element is the "weakest link".


3. Available for testing the channel width should be adequate to the generated load. Otherwise - the test results will be invalid only because of the restrictions on the width of the channel. Typically, the entire testing system to work better in the same network to capacity was the highest. Testing over the Internet reduces the width of the channel.


4. To perform load testing it is not recommended to use virtual machines: when your system will run on a real "iron" - its results may be different from the results of testing in virtual machines.


5. In the absence or lack of proper resources, you can use an external specialized, for example, site amazon.com (clouds). But remember that these are the same virtual machine. There are also security risks, incompetence of staff specifically for your application or issue.

If it is necessary to make load testing, taking into account the user experience from around the world, you can:

• Use the tools / services that can help you verify, for example, how much time will be opened a certain page from around the world.


• You can search data centers, having the right geographical location, and conduct test sessions, using their equipment. Quite time-consuming and expensive option, but the results of its use are the closest to reality.


• Ask the experts conducting the outsourcing exercise testing.