Performance and scalability in Qlik Sense Enterprise
Performance and scalability testing is an important activity that should be practiced throughout the lifetime of a system. To facilitate such testing of Qlik product deployments, Qlik provides the Qlik Scalability Tools, which can be downloaded for free from Qlik Community.
Why run performance tests?
Performance and scalability tests can serve many different purposes. Typical reasons for running performance tests in Qlik Sense Enterprise product deployments include:
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Understanding performance
You can run performance tests that replicate the current usage patterns to understand how your Qlik product deployment performs during a typical day or period.
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Understanding the performance impact of deploying a new app
You can run performance tests with and without the new app to determine the impact of adding a new app in your Qlik Sense Enterprise product deployment. Comparing these test results helps you understand the performance impact of adding the app.
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Understanding the performance impact of modifying an existing app
You can run performance tests with the app before and after it is modified to determine the impact of modifying an existing app. Comparing these test results helps you understand the performance impact of modifying the app.
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Resolving performance issues
You can run tests using the apps with which users have experienced performance issues to identify and resolve the issues.
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Planning for future growth
You can run performance tests that mimic anticipated usage patterns to identify where additional resources might be needed.
You need to consider your hardware environment, usage pattern and apps when planning your performance tests. These factors all affect the performance of a Qlik Sense Enterprise product deployment. For example, if you do not optimize your apps, they may require more hardware resources than necessary. The same goes for the performance impact of the anticipated usage pattern.
Qlik Scalability Tools
Qlik provides tools that can help you to test performance and scalability when you plan and maintain your Qlik Sense Enterprise deployment.
The core element of the Qlik Scalability Tools is the load scenario. This is a sequence of actions carried out by virtual users, which applies a load on your Qlik Sense Enterprise product deployment. This allows the performance can be measured. You can create realistic load scenarios using a wide variety of options regarding test setup and execution. Once you have defined a load scenario, it can be executed sequentially or in parallel with other load scenarios to emulate the desired situation.
Qlik Sense Scalability Tools and Qlik Sense Enterprise Scalability Tools
Qlik Sense Scalability Tools and Qlik Sense Enterprise Scalability Tools include tools that help you to:
- Create and execute load and performance tests where you define sequences of actions that your users are likely to perform. You can then create and execute scenarios of parallel sequences to check resource consumption and identify the right application design.
- Compare and analyze differences in result sets produced by different versions of Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows.
- Perform hardware benchmarking to compare information about how Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows performs in different environments.
- Evaluate your apps before you deploy them into your production environment.
- Use pre-caching to create a cache of pre-calculated application selections. Fetching data from the cache is faster than having your users perform the calculations needed after a selection in real time.
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Make sure that your deployment is always available. By applying a low, constant workload, you can check that the deployment is up and running and that acceptable performance levels are maintained.
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Determine the robustness of your deployment by testing it beyond the limits of normal operation. Such stress testing is done much in the same way as a regular performance test, except that the purpose is to find the point where your deployment fails.
(Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows)
Qlik Sense Enterprise Scalability Tools
(Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows and Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS)
Scalability Results Analyzer
You can use Scalability Results Analyzer to analyze the performance test results from Qlik Sense Scalability Tools and Qlik Sense Enterprise Scalability Tools.