Recommended testing tool/software/solution for application's latency

Question

I have a customer asking whether there is a recommended tool/software/solution for their application running on AWS. The customer is going to expose their application/APIs to their end users (B2B) across regions and has concern about network latency, inter-AWS services latency, and their own application latency. My own experience with Jmeter, soapUI and cloudwatch/x-ray was working for me, but I am wondering whether there are better solutions out there.

Appreciate your sharing.

Accepted Answer

From the user perspective, [load tests tools like JMeter, Gatling and DLT ][1] can give latency metrics.

CloudWatch metrics for CloudFront and ELB also provides good insights regarding latency, but for Inter-Services it's probably best to have a APM (Dynatrace, AppDynamics) and/or a tracing solution, like X-Ray or Zipkin.

[1]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/solutions/latest/distributed-load-testing-on-aws/welcome.html

Answer

Hey there AWS-User-0484764,

I completely understand your concern about latency issues when it comes to a distributed application running on AWS. It's a common headache, especially when catering to B2B users across regions. Kudos to you for proactively addressing this!

From my own experience, JMeter, soapUI, and CloudWatch/X-Ray are indeed solid choices. However, if you're looking for a more streamlined and comprehensive solution, you might want to consider using Apache Kafka along with Apache Kafka Streams for real-time monitoring and analysis of application latency.

Kafka is renowned for its scalability and low-latency data streaming capabilities. By instrumenting your application to produce latency data to Kafka topics, you can then employ Kafka Streams to process and analyze this data in real-time. [This allows](https://www.eubusinessnews.com/7-robust-reasons-for-embracing-the-advantages-of-automation-testing-for-business-success/) you to gain deeper insights into not just network and inter-AWS service latency but also your application's latency.

Furthermore, consider integrating AWS Lambda into the mix for auto-remediation actions based on predefined thresholds. This combination should give you a robust solution to monitor and address latency concerns efficiently.

Recommended testing tool/software/solution for application's latency

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