How to perform performance testing against a web application that using Cloud Server

Question

I am researching a performance testing tools for testing a web application that using Cloud Server(Amazon LINUX OS if not mistaken). I used Jmeter to test web with physical server before. However, I am not familiar with Cloud server. Hereby my concern :

1. On physical server, I have Support Team to help to restart IIS instance before I use Jmeter to put a group of thread/user. Does Cloud Server able to do that?

2. Does Jmeter able to test a cloud server? how? any difference way to generate script compare to cloud server?

3. If Jmeter is not a better choice? what other FREE tools can do so?

4. Do cloud server offer a performance monitor to keep track the CPU and memory usage?

Answer 1

From JMeter's perspective it is no difference where the application under test lives

1. Cloud server is absolutely the same beast as physical server therefore you can make everything there, including IIS restart (by the way, double check your information as IIS doesn't run on Linux)
2. No difference apart from endpoint IP address and maybe port change. Use HTTP Request Defaults to be able to change it in a single place.
3. I believe all load testing tools have nearly the same capabilities when it comes to HTTP protocol, given you already have working JMeter solution I don't see any reason for switching.
4. Apart from normal performance monitors which come with your operating system there is Amazon CloudWatch

The only advice I can think of - add DNS Cache Manager to your test plan, in case of load-balanced cloud applications your test may behave not properly if this test element is missing.

Answer 2

As per my knowledge, Cloud servers are nothing but physical machines/servers, but resources (CPU, Memory etc) shared across different instances on a single machine/server (using virtualization).

So, You can treat the cloud server as a normal physical machine. And Linux OS is same as the one that you install on physical machine.

As the machine is not in your place, you must take remote connection (RDP, putty etc) in order to operate the machine. Except that, everything is same as a operating a physical machine.

1. You can restart IIS server. I am not sure whether you can really install IIS on Linux OS. more details here. (this is NOT related to being installing IIS on Linux OS in cloud)
2. Yes, JMeter can be used to test AWS servers. What JMeter needs is access to the server using URL. It does not matter whether the server is installed in physical machine or cloud server.
3. Yes, JMeter is the best choice in free space.
4. Yes, AWS provides monitoring of the server launched. you can check CP, memory, network and Disk I/O). There is a paid service AWS Cloud Watch if you want details monitoring and alert in case of any failures.