The number of production services that are deployed and running in containerization platforms such as Docker has grown dramatically in recent years. With this radical shift in the deployment architecture, the need for robust load testing of applications and services while running in containers is crucial.
What is Docker?
Docker is a containerization platform. Although there are other platforms available like Podman,LXD,… in the containerization market, Docker is by far the most widely used as of today.
Docker, like other containerization platforms, will package your application source code and all the required dependencies needed for it to run into a single container. The containers that Docker creates are portable, scalable and encompass everything needed for an application to run in isolation.
What are the Challenges of Load Testing Docker Containers?
In comparison to traditional load testing approaches, there are some challenges that we need to be aware of when it comes to load testing Docker containers.
Docker containers are designed to be scalable, whereby multiple instances of the same container will run in our environment simultaneously. We need to ensure that the container orchestration, which handles the scaling logic, closely matches both the test and production environments. A few popular Docker orchestration solutions include:
As well as traditional load testing metrics such as response time and throughout, there are other container-specific metrics that should be monitored during the load test. These can include container restart rates, resource usage per container, and container-specific logs.
We also need to remember that Docker containers share the host system’s resources – such as CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. Ideally, there should be no other containers running and sharing resources on the host system during the test; the load test results can become skewed in ways that we don’t expect.
With that being said, another interesting test could be to assess the container’s performance when it is sharing resources with other containers on the same host. If you know that your containers will be sharing resources in the production environment, it can be worthwhile to simulate the same landscape in the test environment.
What benefits are there to the load testing of Docker Containers?
Investing time and resources in the load testing of the Docker containers that will run our production application has some significant benefits.
Whilst we are busy developing our application, it typically won’t be running in a Docker container. When the application is deployed into production and ready to take live traffic, the application will be running in a container, which represents a different environment to the one it was developed in. We can’t be confident that the application will perform as expected unless we have explicitly run performance tests of the application while running in a Docker container.
By analyzing the performance metrics and resource utilization patterns during load tests, we can estimate the infrastructure requirements for scaling containerized applications. By introducing failures, such as container crashes during the load test, we can assess the application’s fault tolerance and behavior in adverse conditions.
Load Testing Docker Containers in Practice
How do we Prepare for Load Testing of Docker Containers?
We prepare for load testing of Docker containers in mostly the same way as we do for traditional performance or load tests, i.e.:
- Defining clear load testing objectives and success criteria, such as the expected response time of transactions or the amount of throughput the system can handle.
- Procuring and establishing a test environment that is representative of the production environment the application will eventually go live in.
- Choosing an appropriate load testing tool that is capable of generating sufficient traffic to test the system and creating realistic user journey scenario scripts.
In addition to the above, we must ensure that container-specific monitoring and logging tools are in place and configured for real-time insights into the containers’ performance during the load test. Container monitoring can be achieved using Application Performance Monitoring tools.
Gatling is an excellent choice for load testing your application running in a Docker container. You can use Gatling to create user journey scripts through your application and then execute a stress test once the application is running in a containerized fashion.
Example
Here's an example of a simple API written in TypeScript that has two different API endpoints and its associated Dockerfile:
import express, { Request, Response } from 'express';
const app = express();
const port = 3000;
interface Game {
title: string;
type: string;
}
const games: Game[] = [
{ title: 'RL', type: 'Sports' },
{ title: 'FIFA', type: 'Sports' },
{ title: 'PES', type: 'Sports' },
{ title: 'Fortnite', type: 'Battle Royale' },
{ title: 'Minecraft', type: 'Sandbox' },
{ title: 'CS2', type: 'Shooter' }
];
app.get('/games', (_, res: Response) => {
const randomGame = games[Math.floor(Math.random() * games.length)];
res.json({ game: `${randomGame.title}` });
});
app.get('/game/:title', (req: Request, res: Response) => {
const gameTitle = req.params.title;
const game = games.find(g => g.title.toLowerCase() === gameTitle.toLowerCase());
if (game) {
res.json({ title: game.title, type: game.type });
} else {
res.status(404).json({ message: 'Game not found' });
}
});
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Server is running on http://localhost:${port}`);
});
FROM node:22
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
RUN npm install -g typescript
COPY . .
RUN tsc
EXPOSE 3000
CMD [ "node", "server.js" ]Now we will build our container image and launch it:
% docker build -t myapi .
[+] Building 1.3s (12/12) FINISHED docker:desktop-linux
=> [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile 0.0s
=> => transferring dockerfile: 205B 0.0s
...
% docker run -p 3000:3000 myapi
Server is running on http://localhost:3000/Here's an example of a simple user journey Gatling script written in the TypeScript version of Gatling that calls the two API endpoints of our application (save it as myapi.gatling.ts):
import {
simulation,
scenario,
exec,
atOnceUsers,
jsonPath,
} from "@gatling.io/core";
import { http } from "@gatling.io/http";
export default simulation((setUp) => {
const httpProtocol = http
.baseUrl("http://localhost:3000")
.acceptHeader("application/json");
const GetGame = exec(
http("Get random game")
.get("/games")
.check(jsonPath("$.game").saveAs("GameName"))
);
const GetType = exec(
http("Get type")
.get("#/game/{GameName}")
);
const GetGameAndType = scenario("Get game and type").exec(GetGame,GetType);
setUp(
GetGameAndType.injectOpen(atOnceUsers(1)),
).protocols(httpProtocol);
});Now to launch the simulation, I just need to run:
npx gatling run --typescript --simulation myapiAt the end of the simulation, Gatling will provide you with a report containing information such as the response time range, number of requests, and more.
When you’re ready to start executing more realistic distributed load tests against your containerized application, Gatling Enterprise is a natural choice. The Enterprise version of Gatling enables you to deploy a distributed test environment in the cloud with multiple load injectors in different availability zones in just a few clicks. You can then execute a load test against your containerized application using the same Gatling user journey scripts created previously.
What are the Best Practices for Load Testing Docker Containers?
One of the most important aspects of load testing Docker containers is to ensure that we start load testing early on in the software development lifecycle. The best way to do this is to integrate load testing into your CI/CD process. Gatling’s load testing as code methodology means that it fits perfectly into your CI/CD automation pipeline.
By deploying your application into a Docker container and running load tests early on, you’ll be able to find and resolve any performance-related issues before they become too cumbersome.
As well as closely monitoring the performance and health of the Docker containers during load testing, another important aspect of testing is the failover and recovery of your application. You should introduce failure scenarios into your load testing, such as container crashes, network failures, or other infrastructure disruptions. You need to assess the impact of these events on the application during load testing of Docker containers and whether or not the system can recover sufficiently.
Your approach to load-testing applications running in Docker containers should be based on benchmarking load-test results. Gatling Enterprise enables you to quickly execute repeatable distributed load tests and compare the results of any previous test runs in detail directly in the advanced graphical reporting interface.
Conclusion
The requirement for performance testing of applications running in Docker containers is more important than ever. With the vast majority of applications now running in containerization platforms, load testing of these containers is crucial to ensure scalability and performance.
Gatling enables you to create load-testing scripts that are capable of simulating high levels of traffic against applications running in containers. Our comprehensive documentation has everything you need to get started right away.
There are many advantages to containerizing applications, but ensuring that your application still performs optimally whilst running inside these platforms is critical to ensure that the demands of your customers and users are met.
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