What is Spike Testing?

Tram Ho

1. What is Spike testing?

Spike testing is defined as a type of performance test, in which the application will be tested when performing sudden increase and decrease of a large number of users. Doing this helps to evaluate the software's behavior and find application weaknesses.

2. The goal of Spike testing

The goal of Spike testing is to test how the system will respond to the sudden increase or decrease of users. In software engineering, Spike testing helps identify system performance that will degrade when there is a sudden load.

Another goal of Spike testing is to determine recovery time. Between 2 consecutive increases of user load, the system needs some time to stabilize. This recovery time should be as low as possible

3. How to perform Spike testing?

Here are six simple steps to performing Spike testing

  • Step 1: Determine the maximum load capacity of the user in the software application
  • Step 2: Prepare the test environment and configure it to record performance parameters
  • Step 3: Use a performance tool and then perform the maximum load according to the capabilities defined in step 1 for the software application.
  • Step 4: Increase load on the system quickly in a set time period
  • Step 5: Gradually reduce the load back to its original level
  • Step 6: Analyze performance charts.

For example some scenarios to test Spike:

  • When an e-commerce store is launching special offers with big discounts on Black Friday
  • When a web application streams a favorite TV show live
  • When a sale is happening on a daily deals website
  • When the content of a website spreads over the Internet
  • A new system is released for production and many users want to access it
  • Power outages can cause all users to lose access to the system. After power is restored, all users log back into the system

4. Recovery scenario after performing Spike testing

There are 3 recovery scenarios that can be configured to guard against sudden change

  • Use cloud platforms like AWS and Azure to increase server capacity in parallel with user load
  • The quantity limit allows users to access the application so that the system does not have to face the sudden increase or decrease of the number of users.
  • Allow maximum users to join the system. However, it should be warned that they may face the application of slow response due to heavy load. This can lead to bad effects on system performance. However, users will be able to work with the system.

5. Advantages and disadvantages of Spike testing

Advantages

  • Software performance must be maintained at all costs. However, when there is a huge increase in the load of any system, it is more likely to have a problem. Spike Checker helps test such scenarios.
  • In the standard test method, the worst-case scenario can not be solved. However, ignoring them does not mean they will never happen. Therefore, every software should be ready for such capabilities. Such a worst case would be evaluated and minimized with the help of spike testing.

Defect

  • The only downside of Spike tests is that it is an expensive testing process. Therefore, it needs to set up special test conditions. However, in the longer term, it will certainly bring positive

6 Spike testing support tools

  • Jmeter

Apache JMeter is an open source java mutation testing tool. It is specifically designed for functional testing and performance measurement. This performance testing tool can be used to analyze and measure the performance of web applications or a variety of services. Today, it is widely used for functional testing, database server testing.

  • Loadrunner

Loadrunner is a load testing tool for Windows and Linux that allows checking for web spikes and other applications. It helps determine application performance and results even under heavy loads.

Conclusion:

  • Spike testing is a software testing method. In this method, the applications are tested for an abnormal increase and decrease in load.
  • The right approach to performing a spike check is to increase the number of users unexpectedly, then reduce the load immediately.
  • Jmeter is one of the useful tools for performing spike tests

Reference: https://www.guru99.com/spike-testing.html

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Source : Viblo