Why Should I Use Gatling Tools?
Modern application and website users expect speed and reliability 24/7. Is your website or application ready for a sudden increase in users, or have you noticed a gradual degradation in performance? Load testing throughout the development process is the key to optimal performance. This is where Gatling shines; we want your website or application to perform as expected and can help you figure out the best approach for bringing both reliability and speed to your users.
Designed for continuous load testing, Gatling is a load testing solution that integrates smoothly with your development pipeline. In addition to locating application bottlenecks, Gatling provides performance testing analysis with high-precision metrics. If your organization wants to dial in on advanced metrics and data, Gatling Enterprise delivers. Gatling Enterprise is designed for growing businesses and organizations, providing valuable advanced metrics and features for automation, integration, and dashboarding. As an information-rich management interface for Gatling load testing tools, it allows businesses to test, analyze, iterate, and improve.
Can I Access Gatling Enterprise via AWS?
Gatling Enterprise supports various cloud providers, including AWS. When using cloud load testing, you are not as limited by your own technical resources. No installation or updates are needed; you always have access to the most recent version of Gatling Enterprise. Using Gatling, you can configure the load generators using on-demand instances in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Continuous load testing, distributed load testing, and high-scale load testing are offered on the AWS marketplace.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud services platform that offers a wide breadth of functionality support for businesses. AWS provides the provisioning or creates the target environment for the load test. With the IT infrastructure in place, you can utilize Gatling’s load generator tools to run the load tests necessary to analyze the performance of your website or web application.
How do I run Gatling on AWS?
The deployment of Gatling Enterprise occurs through your AWS account. Our tutorial will lead you step-by-step through the process of accessing Gatling Enterprise through AWS, from launching Gatling Enterprise and configuring the simulation to running the test and analyzing the report.
First, choose the Gatling page in your AWS account, and click on the offer that meets your testing needs. After you click Continue to Subscribe and then Accept Terms, you will be able to click Continue to Configuration. This sequence will bring you to the configuration page. Be sure to check the region and change it if needed.
From here, follow this sequence:
- Click Continue to Launch
- Choose Launch from Website
- Click Create New Based on Selling Settings and name it enterprise-server and add Enterprise Server as the description
- Click Launch
Next, access your AWS console and copy the IP address of your instance. Open a new tab and paste the copied IP address. Click Next then read the instructions regarding your login and password information. Click Next again, and you will be prompted to enter the login and password. Now, you are in Gatling Enterprise. Here, you can utilize Gatling’s advanced features for your testing.
Once you are connected to the instance, you will access the simulations table referencing all of your Gatling simulations. Just note that if you choose Gatling Enterprise as a free trial on AWS, you have a limitation of one simulation. Choose another offer to attain additional simulations. Use this tutorial for additional information.
Are the Gatling AMIs Available on AWS Marketplace?
An AMI refers to Amazon Machine Image, which provides the information needed to launch an instance. Three different Gatling Enterprise AMIs are available on AWS Marketplace. AWS Marketplace is essentially an online store that offers third-party software and services that run on AWS, including the following offers from Gatling Enterprise:
Distributed load testing on AWS simulates thousands of users connecting to a single endpoint at the same time. For an application that successfully passes all functional tests, a wealth of information becomes available when tested at scale. The AWS framework uses Elastic Container Services (Amazon ECS) to manage containers on a cluster. During distributed testing, you can spin up multiple containers, each creating hundreds of connections to your endpoint. Gatling Enterprise creates its own resources on AWS. While usually creating on-demand resources with Amazon EC2, we can also utilize ECS for load generators supporting Kubernetes.
When accessing Gatling Enterprise through AWS, you manage your own hosting. Therefore, you control and manage your instances. So, when using AWS, you need to monitor your AWS interface to track usage. If you access Gatling Enterprise via AWS, be sure to send us your AWS account ID if you need support. We, of course, are here to help you optimize the performance of your web application.
The Load-Test-as-Code Approach
Gatling offers open-source software with an Enterprise solution that utilizes a load-test-as-code approach (as compared to JMeter’s GUI). We find that code is easier to maintain and more conducive to collaboration. Plus, it can be stored in your git repository. For load testing, you will create scripts from open-source software to add your desired injectors.
It is more beneficial for the developer to have control over the complete programming language rather than the more limited GUI approach. This is especially important when you get to the advanced requirements of your load tests. Then, once you have your test as code, you can enjoy the readability, maintainability, and version control tools of our approach. For more information, check out Gatling Academy.
AWS Solution and Architecture
You can configure the parameters for testing using the configuration dashboard in the AWS front end. These details include areas such as name, description, task count, concurrency, ramp-up, hold, test type, etc. The testing engine is in the back end, where you will utilize Gatling’s tools.
The AWS architecture centralizes on the CloudFormation template, and AWS provides an implementation guide detailing the configuration steps for deploying the load test. As mentioned, this solution utilizes Amazon ECS for deploying the containers that run the simulations. In a DLT, the simulated users are spread across various AWS Regions.
The CloudFormation platform automates the infrastructure used by AWS to deploy its resources efficiently. It would be tedious and time-consuming to set up the deployment of multiple applications on AWS by hand. Template files are used to automate the configuration of each workload.
Using Gatling’s tools to identify and avoid bottlenecks or analyze how your application will perform under various load-related circumstances is just a few clicks away in your AWS console. If accessing Gatling through AWS, feel free to reach out to us via the Gatling Enterprise (AWS Marketplace) Support Portal.
Detailed Reports
The report includes results such as average response time, average latency, average connection time, average bandwidth, and the percentile of the response time for the test. After the workflow is completed, these aggregated results can be analyzed, and you can iterate by changing parameters and running further tests.
Why Should I Use Load Testing?
Load testing is the process of simulating heavy traffic against your system to see how it performs. For example, you can track how sudden spikes in traffic impact the website or web application’s performance or discover weak points in both the front end and the back end of the development process. There are different types of load tests that you can perform, depending on the specifications of the load test. This can range from testing website traffic load to identifying slowdowns or memory leaks. For example, you may want to test if your application can withstand 1000 users for 1 hour or if a sudden surge of users on Black Friday will result in errors or possibly even cause your system to crash. To discover bottlenecks, analyze response times, or infrastructure issues, you need to establish the performance requirements for your web application, then test, analyze, iterate, and test again!
What are the Different Types of Load Tests?
Capacity Test:
The capacity test determines how many concurrent users your system can handle. Users’ arrival rate is increased little by little until the application hits bottlenecks, responds unexpectedly, or even crashes. It is a great test to determine your application’s scalability and the safety zone for optimal performance.
Stress Test:
The stress test simulates a sudden spike in traffic and analyzes how your application performs when a high number of users request a connection within the same time frame. This type of test is particularly beneficial for analyzing how extreme conditions will impact your system. For businesses that offer promotional deals, black Friday sales, etc., this type of test can ensure that the application is prepared for the potential increase in sudden traffic and will not be a victim of ill-timed bottlenecks and crashes.
Soak Test:
The soak test runs over a more extended period compared to the other types of load tests. The soak test can test your system for multiple hours or even days to determine the long-term effects of traffic load on your system. The result analysis of a soak test can reveal memory leaks and other hard-to-find slowdowns.
Why Are Load Tests Important?
Are you a Taylor Swift fan? Perhaps you were one of the millions of fans to miss out on her concert tickets when TicketMaster wasn’t quite prepared for the billions of requests in November 2022 during the presale event. If that debacle taught us anything at all, it was the sheer importance of load testing. So even if you do not necessarily expect the 3.5 billion users that Ticketmaster experienced, you still need to be prepared for user fluctuation, fast growth, sprawl, or special product launches.
Load testing should be utilized as an integral part of the development and release process during each code commit. Continuous testing is a collaborative effort to integrate the tests into the CI/CD pipeline, and it’s worth the effort. Fast feedback leads to productive iterations and a smooth workflow.
Load testing allows you to create real-user scenarios and get an accurate look at the user experience under varying circumstances. When load testing your web application, you can see and analyze how it responds to hundreds or even millions of users. This will allow you to attend to bottlenecks, fix bugs, and analyze errors before they happen to your actual customers.
Since you can customize the scenarios for a load test, you are able to determine where an application, which might be smooth, efficient, and error-free for functional tests, could struggle if scaled to meet the needs of increased users. The load test will highlight the potential circumstances under which your application will cause problems allowing you to fix the issues before they frustrate your end users.
Next Level Approach:
Gatling is designed for CI/CD pipeline integration and automation. Let us help you optimize the performance of your website or web application at each stage of the development cycle with our range of Gatling Enterprise offers. Whether you are looking for cloud solutions, self-hosted options, or to utilize AWS provisioning, Gatling is here to help you take your business to the next level.
