Infrastructure

Load Testing

We sometimes need to run load tests against GOV.UK and for that we use a tool called Gatling. All the information on how to perform load testing is stored in the govuk-load-testing repository.

Test plans for load testing GOV.UK frontend apps using Gatling.

Table of Contents

1. Terminology
2. Methods
   2.1 GOV.UK Gatling
   2.2 Virtual Machine
   2.3 Rental of an enterprise Gatling Instance via AWS Marketplace
3. Configuration Options
4. Simulation Plans
5. Uploading
6. Combining concurrent test results
7. Troubleshooting

1. Terminology

1. $GATLING_HOME is the directory where Gatling is installed to. For example, if you download version 3.0.0-RC4 of the Gatling bundle zip and extract it in your ~/Downloads folder, $GATLING_HOME is ~/Downloads/gatling-charts-highcharts-bundle-3.0.0-RC4

2. simulation plan: a set of scenarios, where each scenario represents how a user will interact with the website.

2. Methods

There are 3 main methods to install and run Gatling:

2.1 GOV.UK Gatling

Provision GOV.UK Gatling

To provision a Gatling instance, deploy Terraform for app-gatling in the govuk stack in the required environment.

Running a Plan

1. SSH into the Gatling instance

2. Switch to the gatling user and into the right directory

   sudo su - gatling
   cd ~/govuk-load-testing
   

3. Export the required environment variables for your load test

4. Run Gatling with /usr/local/bin/gatling/bin/gatling.sh -sf src/test/scala

5. Learn what each simualtion plan tests and choose one:

   Choose a simulation number:
       [0] govuk.Frontend
       [1] govuk.WhitehallPublishing
       [2] govuk.WhitehallPublishingCollections
   

6. Now, the Gatling web UI is available at https://gatling.<environment>.govuk.digital. There’s an index of all Gatling runs made since provisioning, and you can see the results of a particular run.

When You’ve Finished

Manually “stop” the Gatling instance in the AWS Console UI.

2.2 Virtual Machine

Installation Steps

The installation steps are: 1. Install a JDK, Gatling needs at least version 8 1. Clone this repository into your ~/govuk/ directory 1. Download and extract Gatling, these test plans are written for version 3 1. Rename and move the extracted Gatling directory to ~/govuk/gatling to make it available in /var/govuk/gatling in your Virtual Machine 1. Set the needed environment variables:

• $ export 'JAVA_OPTS=<required-options>' (see Configuration Options)
• $ export 'GATLING_USERNAME=<test-user-email>'

• $ export 'GATLING_PASSWORD=<test-user-password>'

  Note: GATLING_USERNAME and GATLING_PASSWORD are only needed for test plans using Signon. These are the credentials for the test user that has been set up in Signon in the environment it’s going to test in, e.g. staging.

Running a Plan

In order to run a simulation plan, Gatling provides a wrapper script to compile and launch test plans in its user-files directory.

You can run Gatling by: 1. running the following command:

  $ $GATLING_HOME/bin/gatling.sh -sf src/test/scala

Note: This command must be run from within ~/govuk/govuk-load-testing (or /var/govuk/govuk-load-testing if you are using the Virtual Machine).

1. selecting the simulation plan number that you wish to run. Choose a simulation number: [0] govuk.BusinessReadinessFinder [1] govuk.DynamicLists [2] govuk.DynamicListsEmailSignup [3] govuk.Frontend [4] govuk.PublishToPublishingApi [5] govuk.WhitehallPublishing [6] govuk.WhitehallPublishingCollections A description of relevant simulation plans available for the gov.uk website is available here

2.3 Rental of an enterprise Gatling Instance via AWS Marketplace

Note: Gatling FrontLine instances cost $9/hour, so it’s important to switch off the instance while it’s not in use.

Launching a Gatling instance

To launch a Gatling instance, follow the instructions below. You may find there is already an existing Gatling instance available in EC2, in which case you can just start it without having to create a new one.

1. First make sure you are logged in to AWS and have switched your role to production
2. Go to “AWS Marketplace Solutions” from the services list (you may need to switch region to N. Virginia).
3. Select “Manage” on Gatling FrontLine, click on “Actions” and then “Launch new instance.”
4. Set the region to “eu-west-1” and click “Continue to Launch”.
5. Select your desired EC2 Instance Type (recommended t2.2xlarge).
6. Choose the vpc-07069e8dd026cc725 VPC, subnet-00103e6927dd1fb36 subnet and govuk_gatling_access security group.
7. Click “Launch” and you will be given a link to the EC2 instance.
8. Find the Public DNS name for that instance and go to it in your browser. It should provide you with a wizard to complete the set up of the instance.
9. You may find it useful to rename the instance in AWS to gatling so you can find it again easily.
10. If running the test cross-environment (e.g. running a load test in staging from a production EC2 instance), edit the govuk_cache_external_elb_access security group in the environment you are testing to permit access on port 443 from the public IP address of your Gatling EC2 instance.

Running a Plan

Once you have a Gatling FrontLine EC2 instance, you can use it to load a plan.

1. Click on “Create” at the top left to create your plan.
2. Give it a name, and choose the classname that corresponds to the test plan class you want. For example, govuk.Frontend for Frontend.scala. See this section for a list of plans.
3. Click next and choose “Build from sources” (should be the default option). Enter git clone https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-load-testing.git into the repository command box, choose SBT Project in the build command drop down and click next.
4. If you’re only using this one instance, choose the “Local” pool with a weight of 100%.
5. Click on “More options” and here you can enter the JAVA_OPTS value in the second box. For example, to use 100 workers, you would enter -Dworkers=100. Please see section for further configuration options.
6. Now you can click save and your plan should appear in the list. Click the play button to build it.
7. Once your plan has built, it will go ahead and run it for you. You can click on the icon of a graph to view live updating results from the load test.

3. Configuration Options

We use Java properties to pass options to the script which we don’t want to hard-code. These can be set using the JAVA_OPTS environment variable:

$ export JAVA_OPTS="-Dkey1=value1 -Dkey2=value2 ..."

The following property is required:

• baseUrl, prepended to all requests, at the least it should include the scheme and domain name

The following properties are necessary depending on the environment or scenario:

• username, the HTTP basic auth username
• password, the HTTP basic auth password

The property signonUrl and environment variables GATLING_USERNAME and GATLING_PASSWORD are required for scenarios authenticating with a signon application.

The following properties are optional:

• dataDir (default: “src/test/resources/test-data”), the directory to look in for test data files
• rateLimitToken (default: no header sent), the value of the Rate-Limit-Token header
• workers (default: 1), the number of threads making requests
• ramp (default: 0), the duration, in seconds, over which the workers are started
• bust (default: false), whether to pass a unique cache-busting string with every request or not
• maxTime (default: 3600), the longest a test can run, defaulted to 1 hour

4. Simulation Plans

The simulation plans for gov.uk are located in the src/test/scala directory of this repository while their data files live in the src/test/resources directory.

1. govuk.BusinessReadinessFinder

   Data files: business-readiness-paths.csv

   Optional: factor (default: 1), the multiplier to apply to the amount of desired traffic For an entry base_path,hits, each worker requests base_path ceil(hits * factor / workers) times, with no delay between requests. Each worker proceeds through the csv in order.

   Optional: duration (default: 0), if set the test will last for the given number of seconds. Any workers that have not started or completed will be halted at this point. Conversely, any workers that finish ahead of this point will be restarted to ensure the test lasts for the given time.

2. govuk.DynamicLists

   Data files: get-ready-brexit-check_paths.csv

   Optional: factor (default: 1), the multiplier to apply to the amount of desired traffic For an entry base_path,hits, each worker requests base_path ceil(hits * factor / workers) times, with no delay between requests. Each worker proceeds through the csv in order.

   Optional: duration (default: 0), if set the test will last for the given number of seconds. Any workers that have not started or completed will be halted at this point. Conversely, any workers that finish ahead of this point will be restarted to ensure the test lasts for the given time.

3. govuk.DynamicListsEmailSignup

   Data files: get-ready-brexit-check-email-signup_paths.csv

   Optional: factor (default: 1), the multiplier to apply to the amount of desired traffic For an entry base_path,hits, each worker requests base_path ceil(hits * factor / workers) times, with no delay between requests. Each worker proceeds through the csv in order.

   Optional: duration (default: 0), if set the test will last for the given number of seconds. Any workers that have not started or completed will be halted at this point. Conversely, any workers that finish ahead of this point will be restarted to ensure the test lasts for the given time.

4. govuk.Frontend

   Data files: paths.csv

   Optional: factor (default: 1), the multiplier to apply to the amount of desired traffic For an entry base_path,hits, each worker requests base_path ceil(hits * factor / workers) times, with no delay between requests. Each worker proceeds through the csv in order.

   Optional: duration (default: 0), if set the test will last for the given number of seconds. Any workers that have not started or completed will be halted at this point. Conversely, any workers that finish ahead of this point will be restarted to ensure the test lasts for the given time.

   If you are having difficulty running the entire test plan on a single machine within your desired duration, try splitting up the data file and running multiple instances of Gatling simultaneously on different machines.

5. govuk.PublishToPublishingApi

   Requires: BEARER_TOKEN environment variables.

   Note: The Publishing API is not accessible from the outside, you’ll need to set up a proxy into our infrastructure to connect to it from Gatling.

   For example, for staging:

   $ ssh publishing-api-1.staging -CNL 8443:publishing-api.staging.publishing.service.gov.uk:443
   

   You’ll then need to add the line 127.0.0.1 publishing-api.staging.publishing.service.gov.uk to /etc/hosts to make sure the HTTPS server name matches.

   Then you can set your baseUrl to https://publishing-api.staging.publishing.service.gov.uk:8443.

   Since the load testing is now limited by your SSH proxy, you may want to increase the ulimit to a high number such as ulimit -n 4096. This means SSH is able to cope with more open sockets.

   Steps:

   • Put content
   • Patch links
   • Publish

6. govuk.WhitehallPublishing

   Requires: signonUrl property. GATLING_USERNAME and GATLING_PASSWORD environment variables.

   Optional: schedule property will schedule publication.
   This value must be a timestamp in the format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm (eg. 2019-01-10T17:30). The value must be at least 15 minutes before the test run as Whitehall enforces this rule for scheduled publishing.

   Optional: maxTryAttempt property will set how many times each step will be attempting before logging as a failure. This is to stimulate a user refreshing or reattempting after receiving an error response. If nothing is passed, it will default to 1.

   Example:

     $ export JAVA_OPTS="-DbaseUrl=https://whitehall-admin.staging.publishing.service.gov.uk/ -Dworkers=1 -DsignonUrl=https://signon.staging.publishing.service.gov.uk/"
   

   Steps:

   • Authenticates with signon
   • Drafts a publication
   • Attaches an HTML attachment
   • Tags to taxonomy
   • Force publishes or force schedules

7. govuk.WhitehallPublishingCollections

   Requires: signonUrl property. GATLING_USERNAME and GATLING_PASSWORD environment variables.

   Optional: documentSearches property - How many document searches to make when adding to the collection.

   Steps:

   • Authenticates with signon
   • Drafts a collection
   • Searches for Gatling Test publications
   • Adds search results to collection
   • Tags to taxonomy
   • Force publishes

8. govuk.Search

   Data files: search.csv

   Optional: factor (default: 1), the multiplier to apply to the amount of desired traffic For an entry base_path,hits, each worker requests base_path ceil(hits * factor / workers) times, with no delay between requests. Each worker proceeds through the csv in order.

   Optional: duration (default: 0), if set the test will last for the given number of seconds. Any workers that have not started or completed will be halted at this point. Conversely, any workers that finish ahead of this point will be restarted to ensure the test lasts for the given time.

   If you are having difficulty running the entire test plan on a single machine within your desired duration, try splitting up the data file and running multiple instances of Gatling simultaneously on different machines.

5. Uploading

See how to upload results for more information on how to upload results so they are easy to access in the future.

6. Combining concurrent test results

It may be useful to run multiple concurrent Gatling tests to simulate more load than a single Gatling instance could generate. See how to combine results from concurrent tests.

7. Troubleshooting

1. My requests are being rate limited

   Set the rateLimitToken property, and make sure the token is valid for the environment you’re testing. These tokens live in the encrypted hieradata in govuk-secrets.

2. Authentication issues

   • Ensure the right permissions have been set for your test user
   • Disable 2FA
   • GATLING_USERNAME needs to be an email address

3. No such file or directory

   If you see an error such as:

   15:16:48.524 [ERROR] i.g.a.Gatling$ - Run crashed
   java.io.FileNotFoundException: test-data/lorem-ipsum.txt (No such file or directory)
   

   Ensure you run gatling in this repo, govuk-load-testing:

   export GATLING_HOME=/Users/username/gatling/
   $GATLING_HOME/bin/gatling.sh
   

4. Exit scenario

   This may be useful to remove workers that fail at any step:

   .exec{
     //CODE
   }.exitHereIfFailed
   

5. Output html

   .exec(session => {
     val response = session("BODY").as[String]
     println(s"Response body: \n$response")
     session
   })
   

More in the Infrastructure section

Learn

• app_domain handling in GOV.UK during migration to AWS
• Concourse
• Domain Name System (DNS) records
• GOV.UK and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
• GOV.UK's environments (integration, staging, production)
• Upgrade Terraform

How to...

• Add a disk to a vCloud machine (Carrenza only)
• Add a new Ruby version
• Connect to vCloud Director (Carrenza only)
• Create a Concourse pipeline
• Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for GOV.UK
• Manage RabbitMQ
• Manually resize ASGs (auto scaling groups)
• Move apps between servers
• Patch Jenkins
• Provision machines for data science research
• Reboot a machine
• Remove a machine
• Renew a TLS certificate for GOV.UK
• Reprovision a machine

This page was last reviewed on 6 September 2019. It needs to be reviewed again on 6 September 2020 by the page owner #govuk-platform-health .

This page was set to be reviewed before 6 September 2020 by the page owner #govuk-platform-health. This might mean the content is out of date.