Define scope and requirements of new design | Define scenario and workload distribution


Define target environment


The ideal test environment is the one that mimics the production environment. However, it is not always financially viable, and as such your test environment may be different from your production environment. In such a case you need to convert your requirements to be applicable to your target test environment, and provide justification for the validity of your conversion factor or algorithm. This conversion factor or algorithm may be non-trivial, depending on the complexity of your site.

IBM recommends that you test with a database copy of your production environment. If, however, that is not feasible, or if you are developing a new site, then you also need to consider the amount of data that you require for executing your test. For example, what should the catalog size be? The number of products, items, attributes, the number of users, and so on.