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Innovation

Extend OctoPerf results with Instana

Today we have a look at the added value you get by using a combination of load testing and APM. Our tool of choice at OctoPerf is Instana, because we share a lot of common values. To put it short we both have a huge focus on ease of use and docker oriented platforms. I think it makes this collaboration even more relevant for our users.

Anyway, as you probably know OctoPerf is oriented toward running realistic tests as easily as possible. And Instana will get you live insight about your entire platform allowing you to instantly understand the consequences of your load test. This blog post is a collaboration with folks at Instana and you can find the second part whith a detailed analysis of the test on their blog.

OctoPerf 10.4.0 - Better Insights on Errors

We've received a lot of feedback around the way we report errors during the tests. First we only stored the first 100 errors per load generator to avoid having too many. And because of this, many of you were not able to analyse issue happening after a while. This can be frustrating if you want to understand what's going on at that stage. That's the reason behind the two main features of this release:

Improvements

Area chart

It does not only work for errors but it's probably going to be the main use case. This new addition to the report items family will show the percentage/count of the various HTTP/S codes over time:

Area chart

How we tripled our conversion rate?

OctoPerf is a SaaS load testing solution.

A load test simulates a number of predefined virtual users, to validate the application for an expected load of concurrent users. Applications tested range from company intranets to e-commerce websites. This type of test makes it possible to highlight the sensitive and critical points of a technical architecture. It also allows measuring the impact on the servers, the bandwidth required on the network, etc.

Graphical Debt

A load test campaign is usually divided in three steps:

  1. Designing the behavior of the simulated virtual users on the application under test,
  2. Configuring the runtime scenario properties (number of concurrent visitors, locations, browser and network used, etc.),
  3. Analysing the test results to pinpoint potential performance bottlenecks.

When we released the first version of OctoPerf back in 2015 it had far less features than it has today. The GUI was pretty simple and displayed these three steps in a single page, making it obvious for load testers that they had to go from design to runtime to analysis.

First version of OctoPerf's GUI

OctoPerf 10 is out

It has been a few months since the last update post and as you will see we have been quite busy. Let's not waste any time and look first into the most obvious change of them all.

Some of you may have already noticed that we updated our logo last week. A simpler text logo like we had before did not feel fitting anymore. The new Octo-rocket logo will take our favorite octopus higher than never before. To make good on this promise we have also released a lot of new features!

Networking with OctoPerf 9.6

Since our last post about OctoPerf 9.4, we've been working on a lot of different subjects. As usual, you can find all the details in our changelog, but let's have a look at the key improvements.

IP Spoofing

IP Spoofing

IP Spoofing is a technique used to impersonate another computing system. In performance testing it is interesting when you face a load-balancer or anti DDOS mechanism that requires each virtual user to have a different IP. We were previously having trouble with it because of the way we use docker to run our agents. But we finally figured a way to make it work with our new agent. Of course it will only be possible with an On-premise agent since having loads of IPs in the cloud would not be possible. But the setup is very easy, you just have to declare the IPs on the agent machine and then use our interface to link them to your script.