LoadStorm

It’s official: LoadStorm® is a registered trademark of the United States Patent and Trademark Office! We filed for the trademark four years ago…the wheels of government turn slowly. It took a letter from our attorneys to force the issue because they had put us on hold for a couple years. Apparently, they were hung up on a communication product called “Storm”.

But now all is well. We have our trade name and no one else can steal it. Whew!

Thanks to all the users of our load testing tool that have made LoadStorm® a global success in a few short years. We appreciate every one of our customers.

Back in 1986, I had no idea who H. Ross Perot was. Nor did I really care. However, he not only played a unique role in American politics back in the 1990s, but he also was instrumental in the forming of the global technology powerhouse known as CustomerCentrix, LLC. By extension, he was critical to the development of LoadStorm because CustomerCentrix is our parent company.

Therefore it is only fitting that today we honor the 80th birthday of one H. Ross Perot, founder of information technology giant
Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

EDS was purchased by General Motors in the eighties because the IT outsourcing industry was booming and because GM had a poor track record with information technology. As a student in Nashville, TN during those days it was huge news when GM announced the creation of Saturn – a new car company to remake all the old manufacturing paradigms encumbering the US Big Three. The first plant was planned for a small town just south of Nashville. It was going to be an enormously beneficial investment for the area and for the whole country. We all believed the hype! So I determined that my career as a computer scientist should start with the biggest revolution in American business, and I set about getting a job in the computer side of Saturn.

We are planning a load test of a basic LAMP Drupal target system using LoadStorm. This provides a description of the necessary environment on the system, a walk-through of testing steps, and expected results from the load test. LoadStorm does not require the user to setup large amounts of servers for an isolated test.

The Test Environment

In April of 2000, we were releasing the beta version of LearnCentrix. Alltel Corp. was our first client, and we had designed the system to their requirements. I remember the VP of Training asking me, “How many of our employees can be logged on at the same time?” Good question.

I thought about it and gave an accurate, yet indefensible, answer: “There is no system limit.” While I knew that we had no concurrent user restrictions in the code, and there were no configuration settings to enforce a contractual cap, I really had no idea what the practical limit would be.

UPDATE 12/21/2011: LoadStorm has a user agent = “LoadStorm” to allow testers to identify traffic from our load testing tool. In LoadStorm 2.0, we will provide a way for you to make the user agent whatever you wish because several customers have asked to control the setting.

During the design and creation of LoadStorm, it became apparent that a standardized communications framework would have to be used. In other words, creating a syntax of HTTP requests would be a necessity to proper work flow. Fortunately, there were a number of generally well-known commands as described by the Selenium program interface.

LoadStorm is in essence an intentional owner-generated denial-of-service. Clearly, this tool could be abused if every user was allowed to create storms on any domain they chose. However, a user may like to try the services offered by LoadStorm before purchasing an extensive use package. There are two profiles a user can be granted access under.