Load testing with Visual Studio 2012 crashes computer

Question

I'm trying to run some load tests for a web application hosted on IIS using Visual Studio 2012.

Testing for several hundred users works fine (but isn't too helpful).

When I try raising the number to 1000+, the test fail;
But not because the website can't handle the load --- it's because my computer won't handle it!

Is there any way to test for large amounts of users, without crashing my own computer?

Answer 1

Jacob,

It sounds like you're overloading your system. With any significant load run, regardless of the toolset, you need to get the various load components distributed out to run on different systems.

If you haven't already, you should have a look at the Working With Load Tests documentation on MSDN. See also the Considerations for Large Load Tests (especially the part about overloading Agents) as well as the Run a Load Test Using Agents pages.

Answer 2

Distributed load tests are a better bet in several ways. In addition to not overwhelming your computer, they better simulate traffic from different locations, whether around the country or around the world. You get a better picture of how actual traffic can affect your site response.

I haven't done load testing from Visual Studio, but it should be possible to hit your site (assuming it's on one or more servers, and not also running locally) from multiple computers running VS. Alternately, you might want to look into load testing services, such as from SOASTA, that run load tests from the cloud.

Some commercial load testing tools also allow for distributed load testing. Disclaimer: I work for Telerik in the Test Studio group, and we have distributed load testing.