100% + 1 testing | Saturation point testing

Capacity testing

The objective of capacity testing is to determine the maximum business capacity (CB) that a system can sustain without exceeding performance requirements as defined by the business. For example, there may be a limit to the maximum response time and maximum CPU utilization limits, and so on.

During capacity testing, the system is tested under increasing but realistic load to find the point where a system resource fails to meet business requirements, for example, the point where it causes unacceptable response time, CPU utilization, or failures. Sufficient performance data at various loads allows the prediction of application performance under different operating conditions, as well as prediction of the maximum number of concurrent users. In this sense capacity testing is closely related to the scalability testing.

Capacity testing can highlight scalability issues involving distribution and load-balancing mechanisms. Increasing the workload will identify the maximum threshold of linear operation. Furthermore, capacity testing provides insight into how components interact with each other.

For a more detailed description about the various ways of calculating capacity of your site refer to 20.4, Typical performance characteristics of a WebSphere Commerce site.