name: performance-testing-standards description: > Performance testing standards for load, stress, spike, and soak testing. Covers k6 and JMeter implementation, SLI/SLO definitions, CI/CD integration, and bottleneck analysis. Use when validating system behavior under load, establishing baselines, or capacity planning.

Performance Testing Standards

Level 1: Quick Reference

Core Concepts

Performance Test Types:

Load Testing: Validate system behavior under expected load
Stress Testing: Find breaking point and failure modes
Spike Testing: Validate sudden traffic surge handling
Soak Testing: Verify stability under sustained load
Breakpoint Testing: Incrementally increase load to find limits

Key Metrics:

Latency Percentiles: p50 (median), p95, p99, p99.9
Throughput: Requests per second (RPS)
Error Rate: Percentage of failed requests
Concurrent Users: Virtual users (VUs) active simultaneously
Resource Utilization: CPU, memory, disk I/O, network

Critical Success Indicators:

p95 latency < SLO threshold
Error rate < 0.1%
System stability during sustained load
Graceful degradation under stress
Recovery after traffic spikes

Quick Metrics Reference

Metric	Good	Warning	Critical
p50 latency	< 100ms	100-200ms	> 200ms
p95 latency	< 500ms	500-1000ms	> 1000ms
p99 latency	< 1s	1-2s	> 2s
Error rate	< 0.1%	0.1-1%	> 1%
CPU usage	< 60%	60-80%	> 80%
Memory usage	< 70%	70-85%	> 85%

Quick Start: k6 Load Test

// load-test.js
import http from 'k6/http';
import { check, sleep } from 'k6';

export const options = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '2m', target: 50 },   // Ramp-up
    { duration: '5m', target: 50 },   // Steady state
    { duration: '2m', target: 0 },    // Ramp-down
  ],
  thresholds: {
    http_req_duration: ['p(95)<500'],
    http_req_failed: ['rate<0.01'],
  },
};

export default function () {
  const res = http.get('https://api.example.com/health');
  check(res, {
    'status is 200': (r) => r.status === 200,
    'response time < 500ms': (r) => r.timings.duration < 500,
  });
  sleep(1);
}

Run: k6 run load-test.js

Level 2: Implementation Guide

1. Test Strategy & Planning

Define Performance Requirements

# performance-requirements.yaml
service: user-api
environment: production

slis:
  availability:
    target: 99.9%
  latency:
    p50: 100ms
    p95: 500ms
    p99: 1000ms
  throughput:
    target: 1000 rps
  error_rate:
    target: 0.1%

critical_user_journeys:
  - name: user_login
    weight: 30%
    slo_p95: 300ms
  - name: fetch_dashboard
    weight: 40%
    slo_p95: 500ms
  - name: submit_transaction
    weight: 20%
    slo_p95: 1000ms

Load Profile Patterns

// 1. Ramp-Up Pattern
export const rampUpOptions = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '5m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '10m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 200 },
    { duration: '10m', target: 200 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 0 },
  ],
};

// 2. Stress Test Pattern
export const stressOptions = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '2m', target: 200 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 200 },
    { duration: '2m', target: 400 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 400 },
    { duration: '10m', target: 0 },
  ],
};

// 3. Spike Test Pattern
export const spikeOptions = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '1m', target: 50 },
    { duration: '10s', target: 500 },
    { duration: '3m', target: 500 },
    { duration: '10s', target: 50 },
    { duration: '3m', target: 50 },
  ],
};

// 4. Soak Test Pattern
export const soakOptions = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '5m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '4h', target: 100 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 0 },
  ],
};

2. k6 Implementation

Advanced Test Structure

import http from 'k6/http';
import { check, group, sleep } from 'k6';
import { Rate, Trend, Counter } from 'k6/metrics';

// Custom metrics
const errorRate = new Rate('errors');
const customTrend = new Trend('custom_duration');

export const options = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '2m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '2m', target: 0 },
  ],
  thresholds: {
    'http_req_duration': ['p(95)<500', 'p(99)<1000'],
    'http_req_duration{type:api}': ['p(95)<300'],
    'http_req_failed': ['rate<0.01'],
    'errors': ['rate<0.01'],
  },
};

const BASE_URL = __ENV.BASE_URL || 'https://api.example.com';

export function setup() {
  const loginRes = http.post(`${BASE_URL}/auth/login`, {
    username: 'test-user',
    password: 'test-password',
  });
  return { token: loginRes.json('token') };
}

export default function (data) {
  const params = {
    headers: {
      'Authorization': `Bearer ${data.token}`,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    },
    tags: { type: 'api' },
  };

  group('Login Flow', () => {
    const res = http.get(`${BASE_URL}/api/user/profile`, params);
    const success = check(res, {
      'status is 200': (r) => r.status === 200,
      'has user data': (r) => r.json('id') !== undefined,
    });
    errorRate.add(!success);
  });

  sleep(1);

  group('Dashboard Load', () => {
    const responses = http.batch([
      ['GET', `${BASE_URL}/api/dashboard/summary`, null, params],
      ['GET', `${BASE_URL}/api/notifications`, null, params],
    ]);
    responses.forEach((res) => {
      check(res, { 'status is 200': (r) => r.status === 200 });
    });
  });

  sleep(2);
}

export function handleSummary(data) {
  return {
    'summary.json': JSON.stringify(data),
  };
}

3. JMeter Implementation

Run JMeter from CLI:

# Run test plan
jmeter -n -t test-plan.jmx \
  -Jbase_url=https://api.example.com \
  -Jusers=200 \
  -l results.jtl \
  -e -o report/

# Generate HTML report from existing results
jmeter -g results.jtl -o report/

See REFERENCE.md for complete JMeter test plan XML structure.

4. SLI/SLO Framework

# slo-definitions.yaml
service: user-api

slis:
  - name: availability
    query: "sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~'2..'}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))"
  - name: latency_p95
    query: "histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m]))"
  - name: error_rate
    query: "sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~'5..'}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))"

slos:
  - sli: availability
    target: 99.9
    unit: percent
    window: 30d
  - sli: latency_p95
    target: 500
    unit: milliseconds
  - sli: error_rate
    target: 0.1
    unit: percent

error_budget:
  availability_budget: 43.2m  # 99.9% uptime = 43.2 min downtime/month
  burn_rate_alert: 10x

5. CI/CD Integration

# .github/workflows/performance-test.yml
name: Performance Testing

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 2 * * *'
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      duration:
        description: 'Test duration (minutes)'
        default: '10'
      vus:
        description: 'Virtual users'
        default: '100'

jobs:
  performance-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Install k6
        run: |
          sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys C5AD17C747E3415A3642D57D77C6C491D6AC1D69
          echo "deb https://dl.k6.io/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/k6.list
          sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install k6

      - name: Run Load Test
        env:
          BASE_URL: ${{ secrets.PERF_TEST_URL }}
        run: |
          k6 run --out json=results.json \
            --summary-export=summary.json \
            tests/performance/load-test.js

      - name: Parse Results
        id: results
        run: |
          p95=$(jq -r '.metrics.http_req_duration.values["p(95)"]' summary.json)
          error_rate=$(jq -r '.metrics.http_req_failed.values.rate' summary.json)
          echo "p95_latency=$p95" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
          echo "error_rate=$error_rate" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
          if (( $(echo "$p95 > 500" | bc -l) )); then exit 1; fi
          if (( $(echo "$error_rate > 0.01" | bc -l) )); then exit 1; fi

      - name: Upload Results
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: performance-results
          path: |
            results.json
            summary.json

6. Profiling & Bottleneck Analysis

# Node.js profiling with clinic.js
npm install -g clinic
clinic flame -- node server.js
clinic bubbleprof -- node server.js
clinic doctor -- node server.js

-- PostgreSQL: Enable query logging
ALTER DATABASE mydb SET log_min_duration_statement = 100;

-- Identify slow queries
SELECT query, calls, total_time, mean_time, max_time
FROM pg_stat_statements
ORDER BY mean_time DESC LIMIT 20;

Essential Checklists

Before Testing:

Define SLIs/SLOs
Identify critical user journeys
Set up monitoring (APM, metrics, logs)
Establish baseline performance
Prepare production-like test environment

During Testing:

Monitor system resources in real-time
Track error logs and exceptions
Validate data integrity
Document anomalies and failures

After Testing:

Analyze latency distributions
Identify performance bottlenecks
Compare against SLOs
Generate executive summary
Create remediation plan

Level 3: Deep Dive Resources

Official Documentation

Tools

Load Testing: k6, Apache JMeter, Gatling, Locust, Artillery

APM & Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana, Datadog APM, New Relic, Elastic APM

Profiling: Clinic.js (Node.js), py-spy (Python), pprof (Go)

Bundled Resources

This skill includes resources in the templates/ and config/ directories:

templates/k6-load-test.js - Production-ready k6 load test
templates/k6-stress-test.js - k6 stress testing script
config/jmeter-test-plan.jmx - JMeter test plan template
templates/grafana-dashboard.json - Performance monitoring dashboard
scripts/run-perf-tests.sh - Automated test execution script

Extended Reference

See REFERENCE.md for:

Complete JMeter test plan XML structure
k6 Prometheus integration example
Detailed performance metrics definitions
Full performance report template
Network trace analysis commands
Comprehensive SLI/SLO/SLA framework
Learning path and competency checklist

Last Updated: 2025-10-17 Version: 2.0.0

performance-testing-standards

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