System and method for provisioning and running a cross-cloud test grid

• US 8,341,462 B2
• Filed: 07/19/2010
• Issued: 12/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/19/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Soasta Incorporated (Akamai Technologies, Inc.)
• Inventors: Broda, Tal, Gardner, Kenneth C., Hemmert, Michael, Cosby, Kendall, Solnit, Matt, Powers, Craig, Vazac, Charles
• Primary Examiner(s): KO, CHAE M
• Application Number:
  US12/804,317
• Publication Number:
  US 20120017112A1
• Time in Patent Office: 890 Days
• Field of Search: 714/4.1, 714/25
• US Class Current: 714/25
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3428 Benchmarking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70

Abstract

An automated method for provisioning a grid used to run a load test on a target website includes sending one or more requests in a multi-threaded manner to at least one cloud provider, the one or more requests for an allocation of N load server instances and M result server instances which comprise the grid. Requests received back from the cloud provider are also handled in a multi-threaded manner; any errors occurring during the allocation being corrected automatically. The N load server instances and the M result server instances are then verified to be operational and correctly running software deployed to provide defined test services. Errors identified during the verification are automatically corrected either by attempting to restart a failed instance or allocating a different instance.

Claims

1. An automated method for provisioning a grid used to run a bad test on a target website, comprising:

sending one or more requests in a multi-threaded manner to a plurality of cloud providers, the one or more requests for an allocation of N load server instances and M result server instances, where N and M are positive integers, which comprise the grid;

handling responses to the one or more requests received from the cloud providers in the multi-threaded manner, the handling of the responses including correcting errors in the allocation;

verifying that each of the N load server instances and the M result server instances are operational and correctly running software deployed to provide defined test services; and

correcting errors identified during the verifying either by attempting to restart failed instance or allocating a different instance.

2. The automated method of claim 1 further comprising determining the positive integers N and M based on an examination of the load test aimed at the target website.

3. The automated method of claim 1 wherein the allocation is performed utilizing multiple availability zones.

4. The automated method of claim 3 wherein the correcting of the errors is performed by changing at least one of the multiple availability zones.

5. The automated method of claim 1 further comprising deploying a main instance on a server in a cloud, the main instance including a browser application which provides a graphical user interface that allows a user to input parameters for provisioning of the grid.

6. The automated method of claim 5 further comprising storing the parameters in a database instance coupled to the main instance.

7. The automated method of claim 5 wherein the main instance includes an embedded bad server for running a minimal load test, and an embedded results server for collecting/aggregating real-time test results.

8. The automated method of claim 1 further comprising:

executing the load test;

outputting test results of the bad test in real-time on an analytic dashboard.

9. The automated method of claim 8 wherein analytic dashboard includes a display of cross-cloud consolidated results streaming in real-time.

10. The automated method of claim 1 further comprising monitoring an operational status of the N bad server instances and M result server instances of the grid.

11. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium encoded with a computer program product for provisioning a grid used to run a load test on a target website, when executed the computer program product being operable to:

send one or more requests in a multi-threaded manner to at least one cloud provider, the one or more requests for an allocation of N load server instances and M result server instances, where N and M are positive integers, which comprise the grid;

handle responses to the one or more requests received from the at least one cloud provider in the multi-threaded manner;

verify that each of the N bad server instances and the M result server instances are operational and correctly running software deployed to provide defined test services; and

correct errors that occur in the grid either by attempting to restart a failed instance or allocating a different instance.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the computer-readable memory is further operable to determine the positive integers N and M based on an examination of the load test aimed at the target website.

13. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the computer program product, when executed, is further operable to deploy a main instance on a server in a cloud, the main instance including a browser application which provides a graphical user interface that allows a user to input parameters for provisioning of the grid.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the computer program product, when executed, is further operable to store the parameters in a database instance coupled to the main instance.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the allocation is performed utilizing multiple availability zones.

16. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 15 wherein error correction is performed by changing at least one of the multiple availability zones.

17. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the computer program product, when executed, is further operable to:

execute the load test;

output test results of the load test in real-time on an analytic dashboard.

18. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 17 wherein the analytic dashboard includes a display of cross-cloud consolidated results streaming in real-time.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the computer program product, when executed, is further operable to monitor an operational status of the N load server instances and M result server instances of the grid.

20. A computer for connecting with multiple cloud providers via a packet-based network to allocate resources for a test grid utilized to conduct a load test on a target website, comprising:

an interface to connect with the packet-based network;

a program that runs on the computer to produce a graphical user interface on a display, the graphical user interface providing a user with a grid wizard configured to automatically determine an allocation of the resources needed in each cloud of the multiple cloud providers for the test grid based on an examination of a test composition, the resources including a first number of load servers and a second number of result servers in each cloud, responsive to input of the user the grid wizard generating an output that deploys the allocation of the resources via communications with an application programming interface (API) associated with each of the multiple cloud providers.

21. The computer of claim 20 wherein the graphical user interface further provides an option that allows the user to manually specify the first number of load servers and a second number of result servers in each cloud.

22. The computer of claim 20 wherein the graphical user interface is configured to allow the user to visually monitor results produced during execution of the load test.

23. The computer of claim 20 wherein the graphical user interface is further configured to allow the user to visually monitor the allocation of the first number of load servers and the second number of result servers in each cloud in real-time.