5. Step 5 - Create test cases. Create the test cases in which you define steps for running a single test, as well as your expected results. 6. Step 6 - Simulate load. Use test tools to simulate the required load for each test case and capture the metric data results. 7. Step 7 - Analyze results. Analyze the metric data captured during the test. These steps are graphically represented below; the following sections discuss each step in detail.
Figure 18.1 Stress Testing Steps
Step 1 - Identify Test Objectives Asking yourself or others the following questions can help in identifying the desired outcomes of your stress testing: 1. Is the purpose of the test to identify the ways the system can possibly fail catastrophically in production? 2. Is it to provide information to the team in order to build defenses against catastrophic failures? 3. Is it to identify how the application behaves when system resources such as memory, disk space, network bandwidth, or processor cycles are depleted?