Cybergroup, Inc. Stress Tests Their Clients Websites

Company Profile

Founded in 1994, Cybergroup, Inc. is a software consulting firm located in Baltimore, Md., and specializes in Internet and Intranet business strategy, Internet marketing communications, and advanced Internet & Intranet technology solutions. Cybergroup provides a comprehensive range of Internet, Intranet, and Web site solutions and services, with a primary focus on Web-to-database integration.

Challenge

Nicholas Babb, a Cybergroup systems architect, and his colleagues were asked by one of their clients -- an international travel agency -- if they could test the agency's public Website to ensure it could handle load for future marketing campaigns.

The travel agency had recently upgraded its Website from static HTML to a PHP driven content-management system, and the Cybergroup development team was also analyzing an intermittent performance problem with the agency's site.

To effectively serve their client, the Cybergroup development team needed to find a load-test solution that would let them identify the agency's software bug that occurred under heavy load, as well as identify a precise ceiling for future traffic on the agency's site.

Solution

Mr. Babb and the Cybergroup development team selected Paessler's Webserver Stress Tool (WST) as their load-test solution after finding it online. Their group was already satisfied with the performance of the Paessler IPCheck Server Monitor they'd been using.

The development team used Paessler's WST -- which took five minutes to install -- to discover several slow database queries and optimize them.  The process increased the Website's performance and effectively eliminated the agency's software bug.

Mr. Babb added that with Paessler's WST, the development team was able to closely monitor MySQL and the Webserver and watch for bottlenecks and build-ups.  The WST software let the team efficiently identify the agency's critical site-related issues before they began any code or database optimizations. After optimizing the agency's site, the Cybergroup team then compared the results of the WST load test against historical Web traffic reports.  In the final analysis, with WST, Mr. Babb and his colleagues determined that the agency's site was operating at 20% capacity during peak traffic periods.

Customer Benefits

Mr. Babb and the development team at Cybergroup found that Paessler's WST allowed them to put sufficient load on their client's server, as well as report the load-test results in metrics the client could understand.

With WST, the team was able to use various settings and configurations to “bang” on the client's server in “many useful ways.”  They also found that charts/graphs generated by the WST program were a “great help” in clearly communicating results to their client. Today, Paessler's WST has helped Cybergroup's development team make their client happy. The team used WST to load test their client's site -- as requested -- and give their client the data it needs to accurately plan for marketing-driven increases in Web traffic and overall growth.

Mr. Babb added that he would “absolutely” recommend WST to his colleagues and friends. “It's fairly priced and very helpful in any Website performance-testing endeavor,” Mr. Babb said.