Testhouse

Requirement to load test 100,000+ users

A long-standing partnership with a leading solutions and technology consultant in Qatar led to Testhouse receiving an urgent inquiry to support one of their clients. The client is an investment and capital markets firm serving over 400,000 investors and managing a portfolio exceeding $27 billion. Much of its business is conducted online and the firm had seen the performance of its key web and mobile applications degrade over time. In partnership with the Qatari technology consultancy, it was agreed that a performance test of 100,000 geographically distributed users would be performed, to ensure the brokerage, stock exchange, and capital market applications could manage these numbers sufficiently. An initial test was done with a load testing tool the investment firm was familiar with, but unfortunately it could not scale beyond 50,000 users, so the results were not reliable.

Having worked successfully with Testhouse before, the Qatari technology organization contacted them as their quality assurance partner, to load test the relevant applications again with a different tool. Shivaram Patil, Director of QA Services (Performance and Security) at Testhouse, explains: “Our partnership provides access to a great talent pool and in the past, we have demonstrated our ability to mobilize resources quickly and efficiently to meet challenges head-on. We recommended a goal of 100,000 concurrent end users in the performance test, with each user opening four sessions to create a total of 400,000 concurrent sessions. Full system throughput monitoring ensured the application responded as expected. One of the key objectives of load testing was to measure the server utilization (CPU and memory) of web, application, and database servers and ensure the average utilization does not exceed 50 percent. In addition, we wanted to avoid stock market operating hours, so that only gave us a limited window to execute our performance tests.”

LoadRunner cloud test environment ready within 3 days

Testhouse turned to OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) and the combination of the two proved a winning one. With access to leading testing resources on-premises or in the cloud, OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) was well-placed to support this large-scale performance testing project. Within just three days OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) created an operational SaaS-based testing platform, leveraging LoadRunner Cloud, it’s extremely scalable cloud-based load and performance testing solution. Testhouse and OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) support worked 24x7 to ensure the service could run smoothly.

LoadRunner Cloud can create real-world scenarios by generating loads from global cloud regions to emulate real networks during load tests. This is exactly what we needed. LoadRunner Cloud allowed us to scale to this huge load without needing to own, deploy, and configure on-premises load generators.

“LoadRunner Cloud made all required infrastructure available in the cloud within just a couple of minutes, provisioning controllers and load generators and initializing tests,” says Shivaram Patil.

OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) provided over 500 dedicated IP addresses for cloud load generators in multiple geographies to simulate different locations without firewall restrictions. using LoadRunner Cloud, the test ran smoothly on all platforms and devices without any failures.

“We appreciated Micro Focus’ (now OpenText) flexible license model for LoadRunner Cloud,” comments Shivaram Patil. “For this particular project we used a consumable model based on virtual user hours, allowing us to scale to huge load with affordable and predictable costs.”

Improved end-user experience, optimized performance, and cost reductions

As the test is executed, LoadRunner Cloud captures valuable metrics on how the application behaves under different virtual user loads. The client was pleased to see the performance test executed so quickly and without negatively impacting their production environment. Shivaram Patil, Director of QA Services (Performance and Security) at Testhouse, says:

Performance testing with LoadRunner Cloud helped our client improve their end-user experience, optimize system performance, and reduce operating costs significantly.

The partnership of OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) and Testhouse was once again affirmed, as highlighted by Anas Jwaied, Managing Director Middle East & Africa for OpenText (formerly Micro Focus): “Our aim is to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction through our extensive range of solutions bundled with the skills and specialization that our partners deliver. Making Testhouse our go-to partner has been great as they are professional, committed, and focused.”