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Every good test plan should include testing your application under different load scenarios such as: gradual load, stress, endurance, etc.

However before applying any load scenario it is a good practice to follow two very important steps:

• Define your performance expectations
• Identify your application's performance limits

If these steps are skipped, we will run the risk of under or over testing our application.

Adaptive load scenario adjusts the load level according to your application's performance in order to identify its limits.

Running a large-scale load test involves multiple challenges. The first challenge is to create the right testing environment that can realistically simulate thousands of concurrent users.

To simulate such a load realistically requires tens of dedicated servers residing on a high bandwidth network.

Any compromise with the testing environment can cause the test to appear to have excellent results providing false confidence when in fact the testing environment did not have sufficient strength to provide a realistic simulation.

Under an average website load scenario, numerous users use their browser to surf a certain website. A single web page presented in a browser can generate tens, sometimes hundreds, of unique HTTP requests. The browser, after receiving all of the responses renders the page for the user to view.

Web site performance testing while simulating a load scenario where the actual traffic originates from with-in the corporate Local Area Network can be compared to testing a car's performance when it is actually situated on the garage's lift. You floor the gas paddle, go into fifth gear and easily enjoy 200 mph.

Only the car is still on the lift and in fact not moving ...

There is no friction on the road, no cars you need to bypass, no traffic lights, no narrow lanes .. simply ideal conditions.

When high volumes of web transactions are simulated in short periods of time to ensure your site has the capacity and ability to perform well in order to exceed expectations, it's probably done in the traditional way.

Large companies usually choose a more traditional load testing which is internal testing meaning - tests are run from behind your company’s firewall.

In this article I would like to discuss the aspect of load-testing as part of Cloud-Testing and it's impact over traditional testing.

Testing and tuning your application can be an expensive, long and frustrating process. Testing cycles, tuning and regression testing can consume a lot of effort and resources. Performance testing is a crucial part of the software development lifecycle.

Ideally, performance testing should be done in an ongoing fashion just like functional testing. However, what usually happens is that performance testing is done in the last few weeks or days before a launch to production.