Power Equipment Manufacturer Simulates 500 RF Users to Stress Test New Servers

Summary:

A power equipment manufacturer used Cycle to simulate nearly 500 simultaneous RF device users, validate new server performance, and ensure WMS stability.

Challenge

A power equipment manufacturer wanted to stress test new application and telnet servers to make sure an increase of 100 users wouldn’t impact operations. The customer needed to verify that 300 RF devices simultaneously performing user tasks across the warehouse management system (WMS), such as cluster picking, list picking, receiving, and inventory moves, would not slow WMS response times. With limited time and budget, the customer couldn’t bring in 300 users to log into the system at once.

Solution

Cycle Labs developed business-readable tests that emulate RF devices performing 14 activities within the WMS. The 14 activities can be executed simultaneously by any number of sessions.

Technical Specs

Using Cycle® on two average-specification laptops, Cycle Labs emulated 300 RF devices performing tasks simultaneously in the end-user interface. This confirmed that testing was identical to end-user actions and let the team track response time as the number of RF users increased. The customer’s new servers performed successfully under significant load.

Pushing Limits

After the successful RF volume test, Cycle Labs increased the emulated RF sessions to 370. With no additional staff, they then added another 110 RF devices, bringing volume to nearly 500 RF devices against the two servers.

Results

With nearly 500 RF devices running, both servers spiking to 100 percent CPU utilization was no surprise. What surprised the customer was that the database servers hit 100 percent CPU utilization at 400 RF devices. One additional hour of volume testing with Cycle identified an incorrect database configuration, along with the critical point at which the database server, not the new application servers as expected, reached capacity and negatively impacted operations.

The 14 business-readable tests created for this project can be reused by the customer for future RF volume tests. They can also support regression testing and training for standard operating procedures.

Benefits

1. System validation: By emulating users, server and database settings were validated during the volume test, which reduced production go-live issues.
2. Reduced risk: Volume test results were thoroughly documented, so the test can be reproduced in the future without additional resources.
3. Reduced labor: In one month, two resources created business-readable Cycle tests that simulate the work of nearly 500 users.