Should I Conduct Load Testing on Live or Development Site?
Asked by
CuriousCoder42
I'm trying to figure out the best place to conduct load testing for a website that serves ads via platforms like Raptive, Ezoic, or Mediavine. I'm concerned that testing on the live site might disrupt analytics and ad serving, which could hurt revenue. However, if I opt for the development site, it may not be an exact replica of the live site, raising questions about the accuracy of the tests. I'm curious about where most people perform their load testing: is it on the live site or the dev site? Also, since the live site uses Cloudflare, does that impact my decision?
Answers
You really want to avoid testing on a live environment when it comes to load tests, especially with real ad serving. You risk messing up your analytics and could trigger fraud detection with the ad networks. Instead, I'd suggest creating a staging environment that mimics your production setup exactly. Just replace the real ad tags with mock scripts so you can simulate the load effectively. This way, you can test server responses, database queries, and cache behavior without the risk of messing with your live metrics.
Reply to this answer
I highly recommend against load testing on a live site with actual ad serving. It truly complicates things—polluting analytics, potentially alerting fraud detection, and causing issues with ad networks. Instead, have a staging environment that reflects your production setup as closely as possible. You can still get accurate load testing results while keeping your live site safe.
Reply to this answer
We typically only load test our backend systems since our frontend is a single-page app hosted on S3 with CloudFront. For our backend tests, we set up a separate environment similar to production but limit the auto-scaling to keep it manageable. This way, we're confident our back end can handle the load without impacting the live environment.
Reply to this answer
Regarding your setup, if you must absolutely test on production, make sure to do it during off-peak hours and keep it brief, monitoring everything closely for any unusual activity. Still, a good staging environment is the way to go. Tools like k6 or Artillery work well for simulating loads, and if possible, test from different regions to mimic global traffic patterns.
Reply to this answer
Add your answer
Answers are reviewed before publication.
Related Discussions