Determine if the Test System is a Performance Bottleneck

Unified Test Platform is a distributed test environment where tests run on TestNodes remotely. TestNode is software running on a server that uses threads to operate multiple concurrently running virtual users. So how do you know how many virtual users a TestNode server runs before the server runs out of resources (CPU, network, and memory)? AIQ recommends Calibration Testing.

The testing methodology requires three steps:

  1. Identify the test use cases. A test use case contains the steps to operate an app.

  2. Identify the optimal throughput of the app and the test environment.

  3. Run the complete performance test and analyze the results

Read the Calibration Test Methodology chapter of the Unified Test Platform User Guide for detailed instructions.

Estimating Server Resources To Serve A Population of Users

Performance testing using the AIQ Monitor identifies the server-side resources needed to serve a population of app users. AIQ Monitor is an agent-based service to observe CPU, network, and memory bandwidth as Unified Test Platform operates a performance test. Unified Test Platform stores the monitored values into the Results Repository (normally, MySQL or Oracle.) The Resource Utilization report correlates the performance of the app to the resources needed on the server side.

Use the Resource panel in the Editor to identify the AIQ Monitors to log results. For example, run AIQ Monitor on your Web servers, application servers, database servers, and load balancer.

Resource Utilization report is available from the Analyze button from the Start Screen to view the test details. Choose the execution from the list. Click Resource Utilization from the list on the left.