MGA has found that many application owners and IT staff have investigated
tools and services to provide load testing capabilities for their
organisations, only to find that solutions from leading vendors were
priced out of reach of their business and that the costs involved
did not justify the expenditure. This raises the question
- Is there an organisation that is able to offer the ability to
generate load efficiently, while being competitively priced?
MGA has this ability and works with organisations to identify a
level of testing that is suited to the client’s circumstances
and budget, while balancing expenditure with risk.
Outlined below are common problems faced by clients, solutions
sought, and typical results that MGA can deliver:
Common problems clients have experienced:
- Going through the upgrade process only to suffer performance
problems immediately after go live, in some cases user response
times have increased three fold.
- The system worked well in the test environment; however when
load was applied in production problems came to the surface, which
resulted in system users not being able to access the application
and stopping them from performing their function.
Solution sought by clients:
- A cost effective method of testing that could be accommodated
within the projects budget.
The testing must generate adequate load to allow assessment and
rectification of performance issues prior to impending release
dates.
Results MGA can deliver:
- Confirm that the application can support the required service
levels on the target hardware configuration.
- Confirm that the implementation or upgrade will meet your projected
usage in production.
- Identify risks to service levels before implementation.
- Determine the scalability of the application.
- Extend the current investment in hardware by optimising performance
on the existing configuration.
- Leave the client with the ability to perform similar tests at
a later date with the methodology and tools that MGA set up.
- Generate load efficiently with minimal set up time.
- Expose bottlenecks and rectify these weaknesses under load.
MGA EagleEye and the OpenSTA product
MGA uses a combination of in-house developed ‘MGA EagleEye’
and open source tools, such as ’OpenSTA’ to build a
testing capability.
Load testing is a standard feature of the Oracle performance tuning
product MGA Eagle Eye (see www.mga.com.au/products/eagle.shtm
for an overview of the product) combined with OpenSTA (www.opensta.org)
MGA provides a complete load and stress testing capability for your
business.
The functionality performs equally as well as many of the commercial
products, but has the additional benefit of utilizing the MGA EagleEye
Oracle tuning methodology to complete the testing process. The functionality
is simple to set up and use, while providing quick, effective results.
Put very simply the process is as follows:
- Make a recording of a complete Users Web Interaction at the
PACKET level then format and store to a central database.
- Replay that recording while recording statistics to the Oracle
database.
- Record and graph the results to assess and make the required
changes.
The MGA Approach
MGA works with the client in the initial stage to develop an approach
that balances risk requirements with the client’s budget.
Initial Phase
- Setup tools on the database and on the front end of your application.
- Ensure that the database is configured correctly for testing.
- Generate some typical transactions that will be used during
the testing process.
- Create scenarios for a Batch, Enquiry, and Update (insert)
transaction.
- Report & Recommendations – produce a brief report
outlining what is required for the testing phase.
Testing Phase
- Generate additional scenarios based on business requirements.
- Run these scenarios in the testing environment, this will involve
simulating unique runs and then repeating tests after problems
have been identified and rectified.
- Knowledge transfer to your staff so that they have the ability
to perform similar tests at a later date with the methodology
and tools that MGA has set up.
- Final Report - outlining the problems identified and the corrective
actions taken. In addition, any related issues that we observe
during the engagement will be highlighted.
For more information on MGA Load/Stress
Testing Services or other MGA products & services please contact
us.
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