Talks
Speakers
Events
Topics
Sign in
Home
Talks
Speakers
Events
Topics
Leaderboard
Use
Analytics
Sign in
Suggest modification to this talk
Title
Description
RubyConf AU 2016: Your phone rings in the middle of the night and the site is down- do you know what to do? Don’t let a crisis catch you off guard! Practice your skills with load testing. This talk will cover common pitfalls when simulating load on your application, and key metrics you should look for when your availability is compromised. We’ll also look at how tools like ruby-prof and bullet can help unearth problem code in Ruby apps.
Date
Summarized using AI?
If this talk's summary was generated by AI, please check this box. A "Summarized using AI" badge will be displayed in the summary tab to indicate that the summary was generated using AI.
Show "Summarized using AI" badge on summary page
Summary
Markdown supported
In the talk titled "Site Availability is for Everybody," presented at RubyConf AU 2016 by Stella Cotton, the focus is on the importance of preparedness for site outages and effective load testing. The speaker emphasizes the anxiety many feel when faced with unexpected website downtime and seeks to equip the audience with strategies to handle such crises effectively. Key points discussed include: - **Understanding Load Testing**: Load testing simulates multiple users accessing a site to identify potential bottlenecks and prepare for high-traffic scenarios. This helps engineers create a site availability playbook in advance. - **Preparing for Load Testing**: The talk details using Apache Bench as a primary tool for load testing, highlighting its ease of use and setup. Key configurations involve selecting an appropriate endpoint and starting with simple requests before ramping up the load. - **Identifying Key Metrics**: Cotton discusses crucial metrics to monitor during tests, like average latency and response times, and underscores the importance of hypothesis-driven testing to understand performance discrepancies. - **Common Pitfalls**: The speaker outlines common pitfalls such as misconfigured load tests, handling error pages, and understanding the effect of caching and session management on test results. - **Understanding User Experience Impact**: It’s essential to recognize how increasing loads affect user experience, employing principles from queueing theory to clarify these dynamics. As load intensifies, response times can worsen significantly, leading to potential timeouts and degraded user experience. - **Resource Management**: Recommendations are provided for managing server resources effectively during load tests, including monitoring CPU and memory usage, managing open files, and handling TCP/IP port limitations. - **Advanced Tools and Techniques**: Beyond Apache Bench, the speaker suggests exploring tools like Siege and Bees with Machine Guns for more complex load testing scenarios. These tools can help simulate real-world environments more effectively. The key takeaway from the presentation is the importance of proactive measures and thorough testing to ensure site availability, which ultimately leads to building confidence within development teams when facing unexpected challenges. Stella Cotton encourages developers to familiarize themselves with the load testing process and understand how their applications behave under stress to enhance overall site reliability.
Suggest modifications
Cancel
