Vegeta load testing demo

Test target

First of all we need something to test. Let's create an AWS Lambda function. You can use any HTTP enabled service.

Create lambda

Steps to create lambda:

• open AWS console
• go to lambda functions
• create new function
• use microservice-http-endpoint blueprint
• use API key security

Change lambda code

If you don't plan to use real storage (like DynamoDb configured by default in a blueprint) you can just return predefined responses different actions:

switch (event.httpMethod) {
    case 'DELETE':
        //dynamo.deleteItem(JSON.parse(event.body), done);
        done(null, { deleted: 1 })
        break;
    case 'GET':
        //dynamo.scan({ TableName: event.queryStringParameters.TableName }, done);
        done(null, { name: event.queryStringParameters.TableName, data: "42" })
        break;
    case 'POST':
        //dynamo.putItem(JSON.parse(event.body), done);
        done(null, { created: JSON.parse(event.body) })
        break;
    case 'PUT':
        //dynamo.updateItem(JSON.parse(event.body), done);
        done(null, { updated: JSON.parse(event.body) })
        break;
    default:
        done(new Error(`Unsupported method "${event.httpMethod}"`));
}

Test lambda

Use any REST client to test your API:

• you can find API uri clicking on API Gateway node in lambda functions designer
• put your API key into x-api-key header

Reference clients to use: Advanced Rest Client; Postman

Creating tests

Install Vegeta

You can find installation instructions in the tool repository

Targets file

While you could run tests manually setting destination it is very convinient to manage a targets file. You can control it with your version control and add new endpoints.

Vegeta repository has the schema for tragets file.

Check out the sample targets file in the demo repository:

{"method":"GET", "url":"https://<lambda-uri-here>.amazonaws.com/default/vegeta-demo-test?TableName=test", "header": {"Accept": ["application/json"], "x-api-key": ["<api-key-here>"] }}
{"method":"POST", "url":"https://<lambda-uri-here>.amazonaws.com/default/vegeta-demo-test", "body": "eyAibXktb2JqZWN0IjogImE4OTRkODQ0LWNlYTMtNGZmNC1iNTc4LWVhOWJjY2NhZmE3ZCJ9", "header": {"Accept": ["application/json"], "x-api-key": ["<api-key-here>"] }}{"method":"POST","url":"https://<lambda-uri-here>.amazonaws.com/default/vegeta-demo-test","body":"eyAibXktb2JqZWN0IjogImE4OTRkODQ0LWNlYTMtNGZmNC1iNTc4LWVhOWJjY2NhZmE3ZCJ9","header":{"Accept":["application/json"],"x-api-key":["<api-key-here>"]}}
{"method":"PUT","url":"https://<lambda-uri-here>.amazonaws.com/default/vegeta-demo-test","body":"eyAibXktb2JqZWN0IjogImE4OTRkODQ0LWNlYTMtNGZmNC1iNTc4LWVhOWJjY2NhZmE3ZCJ9","header":{"Accept":["application/json"],"x-api-key":["<api-key-here>"]}}
{"method":"DELETE","url":"https://<lambda-uri-here>.amazonaws.com/default/vegeta-demo-test","body":"eyAibXktb2JqZWN0IjogImE4OTRkODQ0LWNlYTMtNGZmNC1iNTc4LWVhOWJjY2NhZmE3ZCJ9","header":{"Accept":["application/json"],"x-api-key":["<api-key-here>"]}}

Note that request body must be in base64 format. You can use jq tool to convert your JSON.

Launcher script

We want to generate both graphs and text reports from a test run. Also we want to have a testrun timestamp in a filename.

Let's get the date in YYYYMMDDHHmmSS format and put in a variable:

datestamp=$(date '+%Y%m%d%H%M%S')

We use this format because it preserves the files order when soring by name.

Also we would need a directory for test results: mkdir -p ./results.

Run Vegeta from JSON file for 5s with max rps of 50, save results in binary format and generate html graph out of it:

cat targets.json | ./vegeta attack -format="json" -duration=5s rate=50 | tee ./results/results-$datestamp.bin | ./vegeta plot > ./results/vegeta-plot-$datestamp.html

And finally generate text report:

cat ./results/results-$datestamp.bin | ./vegeta report > ./results/report-$datestamp.txt