SOASTA - Load Testing From the Cloud

I met Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA, at the Palo Alto stop of the AWS Start-Up Tour. Tom gave the audience a good introduction to their CloudTest product, an on demand load testing solution which resides on and runs from Amazon EC2.

Tom wrote to me last week to tell me that they are now able to simulate over 500,000 users hitting a single web application. Testing at this level gives system architects the power to verify the scalability of sites, servers, applications, and networks in advance of a genuine surge in traffic.

Here are a few of their most recent success stories:

• Hallmark tested their e-card sites in preparation for the holiday season, and are ramping up testing to over 200,000 simultaneous users using CloudTest.
• Marvel Entertainment is doing extensive cloud testing in order to get ready for the release of the sequel to IronMan.
• A division of Procter & Gamble is using cloud testing to get ready for new releases of their web site.

Based on this video, it looks like it is very easy to create a test, run it, and to process and analyze the results.

The first step is to record a new test consisting of one or more user scenarios.  Next, the raw test is edited to generalize it and to specify test data, parameters, and variable substitutions. A drag and drop test creation tool is used to create real-world test scenarios on a multi-track timeline, The system under test can be monitored in various ways while the test is run. Once completed, the test results can be viewed and analyzed.

Pricing for CloudTest starts at $1000 per hour.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[Gil Megidish]

This is mind blowing! Definitely a hit r

[Josh K]

Thanks for pointing out this topic. Testing is a really market in need for good tools and solution. One concern though is the price. i guess only big established companies will be able to pay minimum of $1000 per hour. Check out www.utest.com for the crowd source approach for software testing. not sure about the pricing there though.

Cheers,

Josh

[Lawrence]

Great tool and concept. But the price is going to kill most small companies. If you can afford a $1000/hr you can afford some nice software and hardware. A good offering out there is www.awebstorm.com. great tool and low cost. They are built on Amazon AWS and are ready for prime time.

[Roger Campbell]

Thanks for the endorsement by Josh, but ready for prime time is not quite true yet. We do have a competing product in the works using EC2 and will be taking on beta users next month. Our service is aWebStorm.com! Come visit if you have a need for load testing or are just curious.

Roger

1.505.291.0104

[Scott Price]

Load testing has been always been expensive. I agree with the comments above that $1k/hr is going to eliminate many budgets. aWebStorm.com offers a free account with limited volume, and $30-$200/month accounts with larger volume. That should be attractive to even the small development shops. If anyone is interested in being a beta, please sign up on www.awebstorm.com. We are also interested in conversations with testing services firms.

Scott
970-389-1899

[Hovhanne Avoyan]

there is another EC2 based load testing tool from Monitis - http://portal.webloadtester.com and it starts from $4.18 per test.

[Randy Hayes]

http://capcalblog.blogspot.com - a new approach to load testing on the cloud!