stress-testing

SKILL.md

Stress Testing

Table of Contents

Overview

When to Use

Quick Start

Reference Guides

Best Practices

Overview

Stress testing pushes systems beyond normal operating capacity to identify breaking points, failure modes, and recovery behavior. It validates system stability under extreme conditions and helps determine maximum capacity before degradation or failure.

When to Use

Finding system capacity limits

Identifying breaking points

Testing auto-scaling behavior

Validating error handling under load

Testing recovery after failures

Planning capacity requirements

Verifying graceful degradation

Testing spike traffic handling

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

// stress-test.js
import http from "k6/http";
import { check, sleep } from "k6";
import { Rate } from "k6/metrics";

const errorRate = new Rate("errors");

export const options = {
  stages: [
    // Stress testing: Progressive load increase
    { duration: "2m", target: 100 }, // Normal load
    { duration: "5m", target: 100 }, // Sustain normal
    { duration: "2m", target: 200 }, // Above normal
    { duration: "5m", target: 200 }, // Sustain above normal
    { duration: "2m", target: 300 }, // Breaking point approaching
    { duration: "5m", target: 300 }, // Sustain high load
    { duration: "2m", target: 400 }, // Beyond capacity
    { duration: "5m", target: 400 }, // System under stress
    { duration: "5m", target: 0 }, // Gradual recovery
  ],
  thresholds: {
    http_req_duration: ["p(99)<1000"], // 99% under 1s during stress
    http_req_failed: ["rate<0.05"], // Allow 5% error rate under stress
    errors: ["rate<0.1"],
  },
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Guide
Contents

k6 Stress Testing
k6 Stress Testing

Spike Testing
Spike Testing

Soak/Endurance Testing
Soak/Endurance Testing

JMeter Stress Test
JMeter Stress Test

Auto-Scaling Validation
Auto-Scaling Validation

Breaking Point Analysis
Breaking Point Analysis

Best Practices

✅ DO

Test in production-like environment

Monitor all system resources

Gradually increase load to find limits

Test recovery after stress

Document breaking points

Test auto-scaling behavior

Plan for graceful degradation

Monitor for memory leaks

❌ DON'T

Test in production without safeguards

Skip recovery testing

Ignore warning signs (CPU, memory)

Test only success scenarios

Assume linear scalability

Forget database capacity

Skip monitoring third-party dependencies

Test without proper cleanup

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