AutoPerf: Automated Load Testing and Resource Usage Profiling of Multi-Tier Internet Applications.

A multi-tier Internet server application needs to be analyzed for its performance before it is released. Performance analysis is usually done by (a) load testing of the application on a testbed and (b) building a performance model of the application. While there are a plethora of Web load-generator tools available, there are two problems with these tools: one, the tests have to be configured manually, which can lead to a time-consuming trial-and-error process until the desired performance charts in the appropriate load ranges are obtained; and two, the load generator tools do not produce output that is directly useful for creating a performance model of the application. In this paper, we present AutoPerf, a load generator tool designed to meet two distinct goals, named capacity analysis and profiling. The goal of capacity analysis is to run a comprehensive load test on a Web application, in an appropriately chosen range, at a minimal number of load levels, while still producing an accurate graph of throughput and response time vs load levels. The goal of profiling is to generate a detailed server resource usage profile per request type, without instrumenting the application code. This data (e.g. CPU execution time by Web server for one request) is crucial for parameterizing performance models of the application. AutoPerf intelligently plans and configures its load tests by using analytical results from queuing theory along with some heuristics. Results show that AutoPerf is able to run performance tests very efficiently while still producing an accurate chart of performance metrics.