What is Akamai CloudTest
[*Previously SOASTA
Akamai’s testing solution, CloudTest, is a cloud-based load and performance testing tool for mobile and web apps. We’ve written before about cloud-based testing and the cost and scalability benefits that it has over a lab environment. Akamai’sCloudTest is just one example of a popular cloud based testing platform that we often use at Total Performance that is a feature-rich and affordable approach to testing your web and mobile application’s performance.
Behind the Scenes of CloudTest Architecture
CloudTest’s architecture is based on a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure where multiple load generators spread across the globe allowing users to better emulate real world usage scenarios. CloudTest has a Grid deployment feature that allows users to easily deploy servers at all the major cloud providers and be able to select the number, location and size of servers. CloudTest also deploys, by default, one analytic server for every 50 load generators (this is configurable) thus allowing CloudTest reporting to be very scalable for any scale testing. The entire CloudTest infrastructure can be deployed on the Amazon cloud or internal or a mix of the two based on testing requirements.
Wider Geographic Distribution
With CloudTest, we gain access to servers in countries across the globe and can therefore easily test and simulate a geographically dispersed user base. This also allows us to properly test applications that leverage CDNs. CloudTest supports most of the major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, Azure, Rackspace, GoGrid and more.
High Scalability
CloudTest can test thousands to millions of users concurrently generating traffic on your site or app. Due to the flexible nature of the architecture, setting up to test for a 100 user test versus a 100K user test does not require much more effort. Basically, as soon as testing needs and test windows are defined, spin up the environment and load generators required and start testing.
Real-Time Analytics
Akamai’s CloudTest uses a proprietary online analytical processing (OLAP) engine to analyze terabytes of data and provide a variety of test metrics in real time. As mentioned before, due to the architecture design, the data truly is real time allowing performance engineers to understand different performance metrics immediately. Also, CloudTest has a wide variety of metrics available that can be manipulated in real time to help debug and understand performance issues much quicker. Here are just a few dashboard and relevant metric screenshots.
So What’s It All Mean?
At the end of the day, your site or application’s performance is key to your ultimate success and therefore it helps you make money. Cloud-based testing approaches are much more efficient and effective and Akamai’s CloudTest is one of the clear leaders in this space. Does your team need to implement CloudTest or get trained on how to do it themselves? Contact us today and we’ll put CloudTest and other tools to work to test your website or application.
