Performance Test for a Security Incident Response System

The client

The client is an Australian leading IT service provider that specializes in helping its global customers plan, build and support their IT infrastructures. Its business operations cover over 30 countries located on 6 continents and mainly aim at Australian corporations and government organizations both locally and internationally.

What the client wanted

The Security Response System was a role-based system which was used for users to report security incidents to engineers so that the engineers could duly and effectively analyse and handle these incidents to avoid disasters. This system was built on Microsoft .NET 2003 and Windows 2003 with C#, IIS and SQL Server 2000.

The client wanted Abstract Technology to fulfil the performance test by providing Abstract Technology the System Requirement Specification, Test Focus and Application Installation Package. The following issues must be taken into account:

• The change of the server's response time when the number of users increased or decreased, such as from 30 to 100.
• The maximal number of users simultaneously working on the web server without a perceptible slowdown.
• The load which could crash the server application.
• The affection to the server's performance when hardware or software changed.

Solution

Abstract Technology allocated one test lead and one intermediate test engineer to implement the test. The test lead was responsible for communication, overall administration and test case design. They firstly analysed the System Requirement Specification in detail and then drew up the Performance Test Plan which covered the test solution, strategy, resources and detailed schedule etc. The Performance Test Reports were produced along with the in-depth test.

The test environment: 1 test server with mutually agreed hardware configuration, Pentium IV CPU 2.4GHz, 1024M RAM, 5 test clients, Pentium IV CPU 1.6GHz, 512M RAM, each of which simulated as many as 20 concurrent users.

The tools utilized: Mercury LoadRunner 7.2

Benefits

Depending on the effort Abstract Technology made, the client was enabled to judge whether the system's performance and stability under certain software and hardware environment could meet the expectation, and find out the bottleneck and the optimised solution of the server environment.

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