Top 20 Performance Testing Interview Questions

Introduction

Software performance testing is a sort of testing used to determine the quality of a system's execution. It is used to measure, validate, or check the framework's quality features such as responsiveness, speed, scalability, and stability under a variety of load situations. The system is verified for the ti under a variety of load circumstances.

Engineers and professionals in the field of performance testing are regarded to be among the happiest people in the country. Programming testers are well compensated, with salaries ranging from $75 to $100K on average. This work profile has the potential to provide you with long-term stability and security. As a result, in order to assist you in obtaining your ideal job in the field of performance testing, our specialists have created a list of the most commonly asked performance testing interview questions.

Performance Testing Interview Questions And Answers For Freshers

1). What is Performance testing?

Answer to this performance testing interview questions - Performance testing is a discipline of software testing wherein a tester tests the given system to assess the system’s performance when subjected to a variety of virtual user load. 

2). Name a few types of performance testing

There are primarily six types of performance testing. They are-

• Load testing
• Endurance testing
• Volume testing
• Stress testing
• Scalability testing
• Spike testing

3). Differentiate between Stress Testing and Load Testing?

Stress Testing is also known as negative testing as the tester test the system beyond its boundaries specified to discover the breakpoint threshold of the system. Whereas load testing is the easiest form of performance testing which is done by increasing the testing load step by step to reach the defined limit or the goal. 

4). What is concurrent user load in performance testing?

Concurrent user load in performance testing can be defined as something when many users hit any functionality or operation at the same time.

Read: How to Become a Software Tester?

5). What is a protocol and name a few protocols?

To answer these performance testing interview questions - A protocol is defined as a set of various rules for the purpose of information communication between the two or more systems. There are many protocols such as HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, Web Services, Citrix, HTTP/HTTPS, and Web Services.

6). Name a few common performance testing problems.

A few recurring performance testing problems are-

• Longer loading time
• Poor Scalability
• Bottlenecking
• Poor response time

7). Name a few common performance bottlenecks?

Some popular common performance bottlenecks are-

• CPU Utilization
• Memory Utilization
• Networking Utilization
• S limitation
• Disk Usage 

8). Name some popular performance testing tools?

Some common performance testing tools are-

• HP Loader
• HTTP Load
• Proxy Sniffer
• Rational Performance Tester
• JMeter
• Borland Silk Performer

9). What are the parameters considered for performance testing?

The parameters considered are-

• Memory usage
• CPU interruption per second
• Committed memory
• Thread counts
• Top waits, etc.
• Processor usage
• Network output queue length
• Response time
• Bandwidth
• Memory pages

10). Elucidate the steps that are required in JMeter to create a performance test plan?

To create a performance test plan in JMeter you need the following steps-

• Add thread group
• Add JMeter elements
• Add Graph result
• Run test & get the result

Performance Testing Interview Questions And Answers For Experienced

11). List down the phases of automated performance testing?

Here is a list of phrases for automated performance testing

• Design or Planning
• Build
• Execution
• Analyzing & Tuning

12). Differentiate between benchmark testing and baseline testing?

Benchmark Testing is the method deployed for comparing the performance of your system framework performance against a set industry standard that is laid out already by some other organization. Whereas Baseline Testing is the type of testing technique where a tester runs a series of tests in order to get hold of the performance information. When any future change is made in the given app, this data is then used as a reference point.

13). What is performance tuning?

Performance tuning is a method or a mechanism followed to improve the system performance.

14). Name and elucidate the types of performance tuning.

In order to improve the performance of the system, primarily there are two types of tuning performed-

• Hardware tuning: Enhancing, adding, or supplanting the hardware components of the system under test and changes in the framework level to augment the system’s performance is called hardware tuning.
• Software tuning: Identifying the software level bottlenecks by profiling the code, database, etc. Fine-tuning or modifying the software to fix the bottlenecks is called software tuning.

15). Highlight the need for opting for Performance testing?

Performance testing is generally required to validate the below-given things:

• The response time of application for the intended number of users-
• Utmost load resisting capacity of an application.
• The capability of the app under test to handle a particular number of transactions.
• The constancy of an application under the usual and unexpected user load.
• Making sure that users have an appropriate response time on production.

16). What is the reason behind the discontinuation of manual load testing?

Following were the drawbacks of manual Load Testing that lead to the adoption of Automation load testing:

• Complicated procedure to measure the performance of the application precisely.
• Complex synchronization procedures between the two or more users.
• Difficult to assess and recognize the outcomes & bottlenecks.
• The increased overall infrastructure cost.

17). In what manner would you identify the performance bottlenecks situations?

Performance Bottlenecks can be easily recognized by monitoring the app against load and stress conditions. To find bottleneck situations in performance testing the testers usually use Load Runner because it supports many different types of monitors like a run-time monitor, network delay monitor, web resource monitor, database server monitor, firewall monitor, ERP server resources monitor, and Java performance monitor. These monitors, in turn, help the tester to establish the condition which causes an increase in the response time of the application. The capacity of the performance of the application is based on response time, throughput, hits per sec, network delay graphs, etc.

18). Is it possible to perform spike testing in JMeter? if yes how?

Spike Testing is conducted to comprehend what changes happen on the appl when the abruptly large number of users is either increased or decreased. Unexpected changes in the number of users by increasing or decreasing at a certain point of application and then monitoring the behavior of the app thereafter. In JMeter, spike testing can be achieved by using Synchronizing Timer. The threads are jammed by synchronizing the timer until a specific number of threads have been successfully blocked, and then release at once thus creating a large immediate load.

19). What is the throughput in Performance Testing?

Throughput in Performance testing is either the quantity of data sent by the server in response to the client request in a particular given period of time or it is the specific number of units of work that can be handled per unit of time. The throughput is calculated in terms of requests received per second, calls per day, reports per year, hits per second, etc. In the majority of the cases, the throughput is premeditated in bits per second. 

20). What is profiling in performance testing?

Profiling is a procedure of pinpointing a bottleneck performance at miniature levels. This is done by presentation teams for manufacturing which mainly includes developers or performance testers. You can profile in any application layer which is getting tested. If you want to do application profiling you may require utilizing tools for performance profiling of application servers.

Conclusion

Recruiters routinely provide these performance testing interview questions. Prepare thoroughly, brush up on your skills, get professional advice, enroll in an online course to lay a solid basis, and get started!!