Chapter 3: Stress Testing with Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT)

Chapter 3

Stress Testing with Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT)

The purpose of stress testing is to identify and isolate Web application performance bottlenecks under load. Decreasing or eliminating these bottlenecks allows you to meet or exceed anticipated traffic requirements. After you have identified bottlenecks, you can tune the Web application and server to help minimize end user response times and ultimately provide a better user experience. Stress testing involves testing an application under load to determine maximum throughput. Throughput refers to the number of client requests processed within a fixed amount of time. Stress testing is also commonly referred to as load testing, performance testing, soak testing, spike testing, and Web server testing. It is important to note that performance requirements will vary for each application.