Not including the application schemas and data

Chapter 4 ■ testing for sCalability

and scalability of the application tier must be considered, too. However when testing the hardware for scalability, the application should not be included. These scalability tests only consider bare database servers.

RAP Phase V Hardware Scalability

During this phase, a standard performance benchmarking software load will test the database environment, not including the application schemas and data. The purpose of this test is to verify the database and operating system performance characteristics. Based on the load tests and the statistics collected, the database and environment should be tuned. Once tuned, the testing should be repeated until a maximum or until such point when no or minimal scalability gains are noticed.

Gather all information and settings from the various components, such as make, model, memory,and so forth. Collect information regarding configurations and settings from each component used in the cluster.

Along with this information regarding components, also collect the current operating system (O/S) level settings for the primary parameters for all of these components. For O/S parameters related to Oracle and network components, most implementations start with the basic parameters suggested by Oracle in the installation guides. This should be the initial baseline value before starting the tests.

Figure 4-3. Hammerora workload generator

4. loadrunner is a capture and execute simulation tool. it captures screens from application interfaces and executes the same screen as multiple users. it helps identify scalability features from various functional areas of the application.

there are probably several other load testing tools and products. it’s not the product that’s important; it’s the features that support the type of tests and the statistics that is critical.