In this load test tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Postman for small-scale API testing. You’ll also learn about some shortcomings and challenges of the framework that can be solved by using a tool like Speedscale. Because HTTP services don’t have a graphical user interface, you’re forced to test web APIs by simulating requests from a known client so that you can control the traffic data.

Speedscale is delighted to join the Google Cloud Partner Advantage program as a technology partner giving GCP customers the ability to stress test their GKE clusters under production-like workload conditions.

Go, often referred to as Golang, is a popular programming language built by Google. Its design and structure help you write efficient, reliable, and high-performing programs. Often used for web servers and rest APIs, Go offers the same performance as other low-level languages like C++ while also making sure the language itself is easy to understand with a good development experience.

ContainIQ runs all infrastructure on Google Cloud (GKE), and was able to get Speedscale installed within a few minutes. After installing the Speedscale operator, ContainIQ began capturing traffic from the primary gateway where service calls come into a cluster.

Why this combination you ask? Load testing is my passion, and I am partial to Kubernetes. I challenged myself to share a use case that many could relate to, focused on a business critical application. Websites came to mind and WordPress is the world’s most popular website management system. Of course, nginx is the most popular web server so let’s throw that into the mix. And Kubernetes? With more than 50% of corporations adopting Kubernetes in 2021, what better system to run in.

While Go provides a testing package and a go test command, the former only offers basic testing capabilities. The package also has some drawbacks, such as missing assertions and increasing repetition with large-scale tests. As a result, several Go testing frameworks have been created to augment it. Go testing frameworks consist of tools and resources for creating and designing tests. Some of these frameworks incorporate the testing package and go test command, while others take a different approach.

Microservice is now the architecture of choice for many developers when crafting cloud-native applications. A microservices application is a collection of loosely coupled services that communicate with each other, enhancing collaboration, maintainability, scalability, and deployment. There are several options for enabling this communication between microservices. REST is the most popular among developers, sometimes used synonymously with APIs. However, gRPC can be a better alternative to REST.

Kubernetes has experienced rapid growth over the years, with a recent post from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation reporting a userbase increase of about 67% in just the past year. Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates how containers are deployed, how they communicate, and how traffic is routed between them; it also scales configurations for both the containerized workloads and the underlying infrastructure that comprises the cluster.