A Survey on Load Testing of Large-Scale Software Systems

Many large-scale software systems must service thousands or millions of concurrent requests. These systems must be load tested to ensure that they can function correctly under load (i.e., the rate of the incoming requests). In this paper, we survey the state of load testing research and practice. We compare and contrast current techniques that are used in the three phases of a load test: (1) designing a proper load, (2) executing a load test, and (3) analyzing the results of a load test. This survey will be useful for load testing practitioners and software engineering researchers with interest in the load testing of large-scale software systems.