BurstTests
BurstTests is a methodology used in software performance testing to evaluate how a system responds to bursts of workload. It differs from steady-load tests by applying input in short, intense bursts with variable inter-burst intervals to observe transient behavior, scaling, and resilience under sudden demand.
Design involves specifying burst parameters: burst size (amount of work per burst), burst duration, inter-burst interval,
Test execution and monitoring: generate workload using burst generators; collect metrics: latency percentiles, throughput, error rate,
Interpretation: analyze time-series data, identify maximum sustainable burst size, tail latency, saturation points, backpressure, throughput drop,
Applications: cloud services, microservices, APIs, streaming platforms, network devices; used for capacity planning and tuning autoscaling
History and relation: part of the performance testing family; emerged alongside load testing and spike testing;