A brief introduction to Spike performance Testing

Spike testing is done to check system's behaviour under extreme conditions i.e by increasing and decreasing the load. Spike testing is done to check how a system responds to sudden change.Spike testing is used to check the recovery time and it should be low.

How to do the Spike testing:
1.Check the maximum load capacity of the application under test.
2.Set up the testing environment and then do the configuration to check performance.
3.Give maximum expected load for the application under test using any performance testing tool.
4.Very fastly increase the load for some period of time.
5.Now reduce the load.
6.Check the performance graph.

Advantages of Spike testing:
1.Performance of the application should be good at any cost.When there is an unexpected change is the load then there is a higher chance of facing issues.Spike testing is the way using which these issues can be overcome.
2.In the normal testing methods, these types of scenarios are not addressed.The load can be one type of scenario which can be overcome using spike testing.

A disadvantage of Spike testing:
Spike testing is an expensive testing process because some special conditions should be created to perform this type of testing.

Tools for Spike testing:
1.JMeter
It is an open source testing tool.This tool is designed to check performance.
2.Load Runner
It is the tool used to perform load testing and use to check the performance of a system under heavy load.

Example of Spike testing scenarios:
1.Whenever any E-commerce site is launched and give a heavy discount and great deals.
2.When there is a flash sale on any shopping site.
3.When the new application is released and multiple users are using the application.
4.When some content is going viral on the internet.

Recovery scenario of Spike testing:
Allow application access not be allowed to some users so that system will not face heavy load because of this system will not face extensive load.

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