Troubleshooting Common Issues with Selenium Tests on RedLine13

Many RedLine13 customers have a need for full-browser testing. This is something we support with Selenium WebDriver. In this brief post we will cover common issues encountered with Selenium WebDriver tests and when scaling load testing on RedLine13. Test Never Completes Occasionally we encounter a Selenium WebDriver test that otherwise appears to run as expected, however never completes. One possible explanation is a simple one, where the driver.quit() statement is omitted. const main = () =>Read More →

Extracting Metadata from Load Generator Instances

RedLine13 load generator instances are backed by AWS EC2 instances. AWS exposes a special locally-addressable endpoint that returns metadata about that instance. Using this, you can ascertain such things as the region in which your instance resides, private and public addresses, and instance tags amongst other useful data points. A specific example of where this would be useful is where you have defined a load test to run in multiple regions, with a number of EC2-backedRead More →

Pitfalls of Selenium Load Testing

Tests created with Selenium WebDriver replicate the user experience from the perspective of the UI.  It can be thought of as a top-down approach whereby it accurately replicates the behavior of an end user. Running through a browser instance such as Chrome or Firefox, the test process itself interacts with the actual user interface elements of a target test application. This is in contrast to many other testing frameworks.  One of the most popular is JMeter,Read More →

Selenium Basics for Load Testing

We have several examples available to help you get started with Selenium WebDriver testing on RedLine13. In this brief post, we’ll go about constructing a Selenium script from scratch. We will also review the basic necessities and also common pitfalls when deploying on RedLine13. Selenium supports several languages for scripting, with JavaScript being a popular choice. The first line in our script should be instantiating the redline WebDriver instance: const redline = require(‘redline13-webdriver’); We will wantRead More →

Cost-effective cloud load testing

RedLine13 is a fully managed platform that integrates with seamlessly with AWS to provide cost-effective cloud load testing as a service. Being fully managed means that the configuration, startup, data collection, and termination is handled automatically with no coding or scripting required. This means you can scale to any level simply by specifying the quantity of servers you wish to run, to nearly limitless capacity with minimal effort. RedLine13 Cloud Architecture RedLine13 is a platform forRead More →

People often ask if they can use Selenium for load testing. The Selenium website says: Performance testing using Selenium and WebDriver is generally not advised. Not because it is incapable, but because it is not optimised for the job and you are unlikely to get good results. The site goes on to recommend JMeter. We would say that Selenium can be used for load testing with limitations as many RedLine13 customers do. RedLine13 is a cloud-basedRead More →

Speak the Lingo using Load Testing Terms

Load testing is a niche skill within the large trade of quality assurance. With any trade, being able to communicate effectively the nuances and concepts used is essential. In this brief post, we will go over several definitions that will allow you to speak the lingo using load testing terms. Below we have divided these into categories for better organization: General load testing terms Load generator server – Each load test is run on one orRead More →

How to Run a Multi-Region Test

RedLine13 integrates with AWS to handle the spin up, management, and termination of your load generator servers without you ever having to worry about any of those details.  We also support starting load generators from any AWS region.  This is useful for when you want to simulate traffic which originates from geographically diverse sources.  In this brief post, we will show you how to run a multi-region test to achieve this. This is available in ourRead More →

JMeter Custom Thread Groups

With any JMeter test, thread groups constitute the basic container for test plan requests and other elements. The simplicity of the basic thread group is such that with enough ingenuity anything is possible. Through clever use of scripting, timing, and logic elements it is possible to simulate any user behavior. However, for simulating complex traffic patterns there is an easier way. One of the most useful plugins for JMeter comes as the “Custom Thread Groups” collection.Read More →

A common question that RedLine13 users ask is how many vCPUs needed for load testing. One example of such a question might be: I want to do a load test with 500k users. I’m trying to decide how many vCPUs I would need for this, and therefore which plan to go for with Redline13. Please could you advise me on how many users you’d recommend per vCPU. AWS has an article in their documentation which speaksRead More →