Soak testing: A beginner's guide

Soak testing is a variation of load testing that focuses on evaluating a system's performance, availability, and stability over extended periods, differing from average-load tests mainly in duration. It assesses potential performance degradation, resource leaks, and other defects that may only become apparent during prolonged use, by maintaining an average load for several hours or days. Essential considerations for conducting soak tests include configuring the duration significantly longer than other tests, reusing average-load test scripts, and ensuring backend monitoring for system degradation. In the context of Grafana k6, soak tests are similar to average-load tests but feature a prolonged load plateau to identify gradual or sudden changes in performance metrics, with the goal of verifying that system performance and resource utilization remain stable over time. Grafana Cloud offers an accessible platform for conducting these tests, with a free tier available to users.