When analyzing the results of the load test, we consider a fairly wide range of indicators.
On the server, we start with these basic 4 categories:
- CPU (% of use, context switches / sec, process queue length)
- Memory (% of use, pageview / second, page recording / second)
- Bandwidth (incoming, outgoing, outgoing and outgoing, #connections, connection failures, segment retransmissions / sec)
- Disk (disk I / O time, battery life, queue length, read and write / sec)
We also like to view metrics specific to your web server and application server. For example, in IIS we will consider the number of connections to IIS, the number of hits in the cache and frequency of rotation, etc. In .NET we will consider ASP.NET/sec requests, the execution time of the last ASP.NET request, current ASP.NET requests, ASP.NET queue requests, ASP.NET request timeout, Errors / sec. ASP.NET and many others.
On the client side, we primarily look at the total page load time, duration and TTFB (time to the first byte) for critical transactions, bandwidth usage, average page size and failure rate. We also find the two metrics very useful - we call them "Pending Users" and "Average Wait Time". There are not many tools - they tell you in each sampling period exactly how many simulated users are in the process of receiving a resource from the server, and how long they have been waiting for the resource to arrive on average. We find that they are very useful for
- determining when a server has reached its capacity
- detection that the server stops responding to certain types of queries (usually for certain resources, such as those that require a query to the database)
CMerrill
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