We broke our own load testing record – again.

Apica was engaged in November to quickly conduct a massive load test for a South American election campaign organization. We believe this was the largest load test ever conducted, surpassing the two million virtual user mark we set earlier in the year for a major global brand.

The tests conducted surpassed 200,000 requests – per second – for an hour.  The largest of its kind ever performed that we know of. To put this into context, roughly 23,000 Google searches occur every second. Our test exceeded this performance level tenfold. Agents from throughout the entire global load-testing network were used to generate the necessary traffic levels. Test results provided unique insights into a wide range of end-to-end performance issues.

Election campaign organizations increasingly provide excellent insights into the close working relationships required between development and operations teams executing against extreme time and resource constraints. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, When the Nerds Go Marching In, explains how “Campaigns are not just another Fortune 500 company or top-50 website. They have their own culture and demands, strange rigors and schedules. The deadlines are hard and the pressure would be enough to press the t-shirt of even the most battle-tested startup veteran.”

Like we always say, it pays to plan for success!