Test component assignment in a performance testing environment

In this paper we are going to introduce the problem of assigning test components to hosts of a performance (or load) testing environment, and its two novel solutions. When testing the performance of a device (system under test-SUT), the test environment simulates the latter real-life environment of the SUT. The number of hosts in the test environment is however way less than the number of hosts the SUT will have to serve in its real-life environment. Thus, real-life hosts are simulated by software entities, the so-called test components that have to be optimally assigned and then executed on the hosts of the test environment (testing hosts). Our goal is to emulate all the test components by as few testing hosts as possible, that is, to maximize the load on the testing hosts. The problem to be solved is a special case of the task assignment problem for which many solutions have been developed. Our solutions presented in this paper are, however, optimized for distributing load testing traffic. Thus the possibilities and restrictions we had to take into account are very different from those of the classical task assignment case. One of the solutions we present extends existing bin packing heuristics, while the other one solves a series of integer linear programs to make the assignments. Our simulations have shown that by applying our solutions, the average load level on testing hosts can be significantly increased.