Scalability testing

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Objectives

1. set up a dedicated testing environment
The testing environment will start with 5 virtual machines set up in a hosted environment, where hardware resources can be scaled up and down between tests. It is expected that the test environment will be ready to use by January 15th. Test Environment Documentation

2. develop a new initial repeatable test suite
Initial tests will focus on two main areas - file io and documenting individual micro-service performance. Data will be collected from external monitoring tools as well as from internal instrumentation.

External monitoring will be done with two open source packages, munin and collectd. This will provide data at the operating system level. Internal instrumentation already exists within the Archivematica source code, where each step in the process has a start time and end time recorded in the local database. This instrumentation will be extended and refined during the buildout of the test suite. The data collected will be used to identify which specific micro-services, and which steps within those micro-services are taking the longest time to complete.

3. document a full matrix of test parameters
Archivematica workflow can vary considerably depending on use case. Artefactual will document all testing efforts on this wiki, building out a matrix of test cases. For example, we expect that adding additional storage subsystem capacity will allow for linear growth in scalability (add more disks, it should all go faster). This will be one of the first 'columns' in our test matrix, repeating tests with the same workload, changing the capacity (maximum io's per second) of the storage subsystem between tests.

Initial tests will focus on the 4 primary stages in the Archivematica workflow - Transfer, Ingest, creation of SIP, creation of AIP. There are additional steps required, both before Transfer, and after creation of AIP, however these steps do not necessarily involve the use of Archivematica code. For example, moving digital objects to a shared folder that Archivematica can access is a prerequisite of the Transfer stage, and can take a considerable amount of time. We will document best practices for how to complete that work after initial scalability testing is complete.

4. repeat test suite at customer sites
The two initial customer sites have been identified by Archivematica and tests will be repeated at both customer sites.

Test Structure

Scalability testing is done using a scripted workload, where all decision points, that are normally left to the Archivist to make using the Dashboard, are instead automated through the use of a configuration file. This allows for repeatable test cases. Example test scripts will be posted here over the coming weeks.

Test File Sets

Test Documents

Archived Scalability Test Results

Historical test results are available Archived Scalability Test Results