Performance Validation with k6
Validate system performance under high throughput. Test capacity limits, identify bottlenecks, and ensure your infrastructure can handle production load.
Live k6 Test Execution
Test Scenarios & Results
Why Load Testing Matters
Load testing simulates real-world traffic patterns to validate that your system can handle expected (and unexpected) demand. Without load testing, you're deploying blind—hoping your infrastructure will scale when it matters most.
I use k6, an open-source load testing tool built for modern, cloud-native systems. It supports:
Ramping Tests
Gradually increase load to find breaking points. Identify at what VU count latency degrades or errors spike.
Soak Tests
Run sustained load for extended periods. Catch memory leaks, connection pool exhaustion, and slow degradation over time.
Spike Tests
Sudden traffic bursts to test auto-scaling. Ensure your system recovers gracefully after load spikes.
Real Use Case: Text2SQL 500 Concurrent Queries/Sec Validation
How load testing revealed hidden bottlenecks in the AI query pipeline
Challenge: The Text2SQL Query Engine needed to handle 500 concurrent natural language queries with p95 latency under 800ms. Business dashboards refresh on a schedule, causing predictable traffic spikes.
Solution: Created k6 test scripts simulating diverse query patterns:
Discovery: At 350 concurrent users, p95 latency jumped from 620ms to 3.2 seconds. The culprit? LLM provider rate limiting combined with database connection pool saturation.
Fix: Implemented request queuing with exponential backoff for LLM calls and increased DB pool size from 25 to 100. Re-tested at 600 concurrent users—p95 stayed at 750ms.
Impact: Prevented timeouts during peak dashboard refresh periods. Load testing caught the cascading failures before going live.
How It Helps
Capacity Planning
Know your system's limits before you hit them. Make data-driven scaling decisions based on actual performance curves.
Bottleneck Identification
Pinpoint exactly where performance degrades. Database queries? Thread pools? Network I/O? Load testing reveals the answer.
SLA Validation
Prove that your system meets latency and throughput SLAs under realistic load. Ship with confidence.