Performance testing vs Load testing vs  Stress testing vs Endurance testing

1. Performance testing – The main purpose of Performance testing is to arrive the benchmark & baseline of the system behavior (e.g response time) under normal/moderate load. This test will help performance engineer  to analyse how does the application behave under normal conditions.

 

2. Load testing  – here load will be constantly and steadily increased over a given period of time. i.e the constant load applied for a constant period of time. For example a load of 100 users are applied for 15 min.

3. Stress test – it is meant to push the system beyond the normal load limits or extreme conditions. This test is to make sure the servers don’t crash or what point it crashes. Stress test will  verify the breaking point of the system or how much load, system can withstand.

For example a load of 100 users are applied for 15 min and then 150 users load is applied for next 15 min. then 200 users load is applied for next 15 min. Verify at what point system stopped to respond.

4. Endurance testing – for easy understanding, I would say it is a “Load testing on extended period” to make sure web servers are performing longer period of time. For example a load of 100 users are applied for 48 hours

Note: Once the performance testing is completed successfully, tester can assume the performance requirements are met and he can start load testing. After that Stress testing if required.

Load testing tools in the market are

1) HPE LoadRunner is from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

2) JMeter – Apache JMeter. It is a Java based performance testing tool works on web communication layer (HTTP)