Stress Testing involves using a load testing tool to attempt to break a system. This typically means taking the system out of its comfort zone. In some cases the amount of hardware needed to do so might be cost prohibitive. In other cases, it would take too long to provide the hardware resources needed to fully stress the system. In this situation, cloud computing really shines.
Cloud computing allows you to scale resources economically and provides instantaneous and cost effective access to significant computing resources. In addition, cloud computing allows you to ramp up and ramp down computing resources as needed.
The purpose of stress testing is to stress a system to the extent possible and to see when it breaks. This can often require a large hardware investment. With the advent of cloud computing this is no longer the case. Stress testing in the cloud makes a lot of sense. The cloud is elastic and allows the tester to easily and instantaneouslyscale hardware resources to ensure that stress testing can be properly accomplished. Moreover, if you use those resources only for a few days you will only need to pay for the cost of using the hardware for a few days. Cloud testing changes how we perform stress testing. We no longer have to worry about hitting a hardware resource bottleneck. We can scale the hardware much more easily and not have to worry about factors such as time and cost.
