What is On-premises Performance Testing?
On-premises performance testing involves setting up and managing testing infrastructure in your office or a physical data center that you control. From purchasing of hardware and software to maintaining end-to-end aspects of the testing infrastructure is your responsibility. On-premises performance testing also requires setting up a dedicated testing team with required skills that fit your testing dynamics. This gives you better control over the testing process with increased security.
What is Cloud-based Performance Testing?
Cloud-based performance testing is done through a third-party service provider that typically offers SaaS solutions for performance testing. Cloud-based performance testing solutions are fully-managed by service providers, including scaling and maintenance. This means you don’t have to invest in the testing infrastructure, and you can start testing your website/application’s performance right away. Cloud-based performance testing solutions effectively save cost and time and are available on-demand 24x7x365 from anywhere.
On-premises vs. Cloud-based Performance Testing Requirements
Getting started with on-premises performance testing is a challenging task. It comes with its own set of flexibility and limitations. Let’s break it down.
Extensive Hardware Installation
To simulate a high user load for performance testing, you need high-end processors, huge RAM, more disk space, and broad network bandwidth. Sourcing and Installing such infrastructure takes time and specialized skills.
Infrastructure Costs
On-premises performance testing infrastructure demands high-end hardware, software, and network setup. Apart from the initial investment, you need to upgrade and scale it too regularly. This makes it an additional IT cost overhead for the business.
Hiring Teams
You will need to hire installation engineers, maintenance engineers, and testing engineers to run your on-premises performance testing efficiently. As your business grows, you will need to scale your testing and maintenance teams too.
Skills Limitations
Different test scenarios and testing requirements need people with specialized performance testing skills. Writing scripts, executing tests, analyzing test reports, and coordinating with developers for remediation requires different sets of skills and experience. This makes hiring a good testing team a challenging task.
Advantages of On-premises vs. Cloud-based Performance Testing
Better Control
On-premises performance testing offers better control over the infrastructure and testing process as a whole. You can upgrade and configure your hardware and software whenever you need it without depending on a third-party vendor. Testers can also leverage this control by tweaking with infrastructure configurations for exploratory testing.
Increased Data Security
On-premises performance testing happens in your office or your own data center. This means if you are working with sensitive data, you don’t have to worry about compromising it to a third-party vendor. This gives a sense of enhanced data security to your organization.
Lower Long-Run Cost
In some cases, If you have frequent testing requirements and your requirements don’t change much over time, having an on-premises performance testing set up can prove to be cost-effective in the long-run.
Accessibility
On-premises performance testing can be accessed and utilized without the need for connecting to the internet for internal systems. However, you can do it from within the infrastructure premise.
Disadvantages of On-premises Performance Testing
High Initial Investment
For setting up on-premises performance testing infrastructure, you need to invest in hardware, software, and workforce. This can prove to be quite costly and time-consuming.
Scalability and Maintenance
On-premises performance testing infrastructure requires regular updates, configuration management, and upgrades for optimal performance. Scaling the infrastructure when your requirements increase add up to additional overhead for cost and time.
No Geographical Leverage
Performance testing gives the best result when you simulate the most realistic user load. Suppose you have a website/application that is accessed by users of different geographical reasons. In that case, an on-premises setup will fail to simulate actual users by not generating load from those locations.
Limited Testing Flexibility
On-premises performance testing offers flexibility in configurations and updates, however, testers may find it challenging to change configurations every time you need to run multiple scenarios with different configurations.
Performance Issues
Very often, on-premises infrastructure deviates from real user load on multiple parameters such as browsers, devices, internet speed, etc. This can lead to a significant deviation from actual performance. Also, you need to optimize your systems for accurate performance testing results.
On-premises Performance Testing Solutions
For on-premises performance testing, there are good open source solutions available as well as license-based. But very few of them have good documentation and community support so choose wisely.
Apache JMeter. It’s an open-source Java-based tool that you can install on your machines/infrastructure and test web apps, REST APIs, databases, and more.
LoadComplete. LoadComplete is a desktop tool for load testing, stress testing, and scalability testing. You can test Java and .NET apps with it.
Test Studio. It is useful for performance testing your website, application, and desktop application. It supports HTML5, AJAX, Android, and WPF.
See how the LoadView platform stacks up against other performance testing solutions!
The Need for Cloud-based Performance Testing Solution
With the evolution of agile processes, rapid prototyping, and cloud infrastructure, most companies prefer a cloud-based performance testing solution – and for good reasons. The following are some of the vital features and advantages that cloud-based tools offer and are key features when deciding on an on-premises vs. cloud-based solution.
- On-Demand. Get up and running with your tests in minutes.
- Fully-Managed. No need to worry about updates, upgrades, maintenance, and scaling.
- Geo-locations. Run your tests from multiple locations with the most realistic user load.
- Cost-effective. No infrastructure overhead and reasonable monthly pricing.
- Access. Run your test cases from anywhere and anytime.
LoadView: Cloud-based Performance Testing Solution
LoadView is a cloud-based performance testing tool that offers all the vital features for performance testing with some innovative features on top of that. Testers don’t need specialized skills for using LoadView for performance testing, as it offers point and click scripting with the EveryStep Web Recorder to create test scripts without any programming knowledge. With LoadView, you can test your website/application from multiple devices and browsers sitting in different geographical locations. LoadView generates the most realistic user load, which is crucial for the success of performance testing. With its detailed reporting and insights, you can quickly figure out the performance issues and optimize for it.
Conclusion: On-premises vs. Cloud-based Solutions
On-premises vs. cloud-based performance testing setup is time-consuming and requires heavy investment in infrastructure, maintenance, and workforce. On the other hand, cloud-based performance testing solutions are quick to get started and offer vital features for modern websites and applications. LoadView, our cloud-based performance testing tool, enables you to test your websites/applications with the most realistic user load, giving you accurate results. LoadView is best for testing the performance of your websites, web pages, web applications, APIs, third-party services and more.
Get started with your performance testing with the LoadView free trial.