WAPT Pro
WAPT Pro is a load and stress testing tool for websites and web-based applications. It uses a fully customizable virtual users to simulate a real-life action. The testing is performed with help of several computers managed remotely. Such environment can produce test volume suitable even for high performance servers. The results are represented as descriptive graphs and reports that include server performance data collected during the test.Distributed load generation
The resources of a single workstation can be insufficient to create a load required to test a web application running on a powerful server. WAPT Pro resolves this problem by using several computers for load generation. For this purpose a special service called WAPT Pro load agent should be installed on each system.
The whole testing environment is managed from a different computer running WAPT Pro workplace component. It provides a convenient user interface for test engineers. They can use it to design test scenarios, launch and control test execution in real time, and analyze the results. Since all these activities do not require essential hardware resources, this component can be installed on any workstation with modest hardware configuration.
When you design test scenario you do not need to know the number of load agents that will be used in the test run. You can run same test with any number of agents. However if you try to create an excessive load in your test, the system will produce a warning message to notify you that current configuration is not sufficient to achieve the specified test load. In this case you can extend the system by adding more servers running load agents.
The total number of load agents is not limited, so you can create almost any load. You are only limited by the network bandwidth. You do not need to specify how many virtual users should be emulated by each load agent. This distribution is done automatically and depends on the resources available on each system. You can run load agents on computers with different hardware configurations. More productive systems will produce more virtual users. Agents are installed as system services, so you do not need to launch them each time you want to perform testing.
Agents do not consume system resources when no testing is performed and do not conflict with other software. So, it is not needed to purchase dedicated servers for running agents. With the regular testing tools you may frequently face the situation when your system tries to generate too many virtual users and becomes overloaded itself. As a result you receive incorrect test results. WAPT Pro resolves this problem by automatically balancing load between the agents. When some agent becomes low in system resources, it stops receiving additional tasks, and they are allocated to other agents.
Remote test management
WAPT Pro creates a comprehensive testing environment that can be used by a single test engineer or a quality assurance team. This environment consists of one or several workstations with the WAPT Pro workplace component installed on each of them, and several load generation servers running WAPT Pro load agents.
The workplace component provides a convenient user interface for test engineers. They can use it to design test scenarios, launch and control test execution in real time, and analyze the results. The actual emulation of virtual users during the test is performed by load generation agents running on one or more different servers. Such distributed architecture allows you to manage testing process remotely and achieve the following benefits.
1. You can design tests on your workstation and launch them using a different server with a more powerful hardware configuration. Once the whole environment is configured, you can use all its features right from your workplace. You do not need to login to the load agents systems and adjust them for each test.
2. Load generation servers can be placed on your network close to the web server that you want to test. This way you will eliminate bottlenecks related to the network bandwidth. The communication between WAPT Pro load agents and the workplace component is done over TCP/IP, so you can do such testing even from a remote location over the Internet.
3. You can easily change load generation servers right from your workstation. This will allow you to run same test using different load agents and compare test results.
4. You can install load agent on a server with a superior hardware configuration and let many test engineers connect to it from their workstations to perform their testing. They can even run their tests concurrently, provided that the performance of the server is sufficient to handle this.
Server Performance Monitoring
WAPT Pro can measure various parameters of the web server performance during the test. This way you can see how your web application responds to the increasing load in terms of CPU, RAM or network usage. You can also measure various parameters of the database performance, which is essential for web applications that use databases. The obtained data is included in the test results along with other parameters.
This feature is especially useful to determine bottlenecks in the server performance. For example, you notice that a peak in the server response time coincides with a 100% peak in the RAM utilization on the server. This means that you can improve the performance of the web application by adding more RAM, because that resource is insufficient in the current configuration when the load is peaking. Same idea can be applied to CPU or HDD utilization as well as to any other limited system resource.
WAPT Pro can use either WMI or SNMP protocol to get the mentioned performance counters data from the web server. Database performance parameters are obtained directly from the database by sending corresponding SQL requests through the ODBC interface. Requests for basic MS SQL and Oracle counters are predefined in the product. You can also add your own specific requests for any additional performance data available in your database through ODBC.