Akik The wind rises

background

With the rapid development of the Internet, a variety of tools and services derived from the Internet have been integrated into every corner of our work and life, so the stability of Internet services is more and more important, such as online registration and consultation, online government affairs, online consumption and entertainment are closely related to everyone’s life. As an important means of verifying service stability, performance test has been paid more and more attention by Internet service providers.

At present, the mainstream performance test tools in the industry all send performance test requests from the public network to simulate public network traffic, which can undoubtedly simulate the real traffic when users use Internet services as much as possible. However, this method also has some problems, such as:

• Additional performance test costs. When the public network traffic is transferred from the client to the server through multiple carrier networks, additional traffic and bandwidth costs are incurred. For large-scale performance tests, the traffic costs far exceed the machine costs during performance tests

• You cannot test services that have high security requirements, such as finance, insurance, and data storage services. If the public network access is enabled, data leakage may occur. Therefore, you cannot initiate performance tests from the public network

• Increased deployment and transformation costs. When a service is still under development, it may need frequent performance tests and adjust the service based on the test results. This situation is not suitable for open access to the public network, so performance tests cannot be initiated from the public network

To solve the above problems, this article introduces the method of performing performance tests on the alicloud VPC Intranet. Compared with the traditional public performance test, the VPC network performance test completely in VPC environment for customers, service to the public without exposure, higher safety, and can be accessed by users VPC custom routing table, through the local data center to form a hybrid cloud architecture, have better flexibility, moreover also can in micro service development stage, Performing a performance test for each micro-service on the VPC Intranet can greatly improve performance test efficiency and save performance test costs.

What is aliyun VPC private network

First, this section describes what ali Cloud VPC private network (also called VPC Intranet) is. A VPC private network is your private network in the cloud. You can fully control your own private network, such as choosing IP address range, configuring routing table and gateway, etc. You can use Ali Cloud resources, such as cloud server, cloud database RDS and load balancing, in your own defined private network.

As shown in the following figure, each private network consists of at least one private network segment, one router, and at least one switch.

Functional comparison and features

Private VPCS are secure, reliable, controllable, available, and scalable compared with classic networks that are physically connected between different customers.

• Each VPC network corresponds to a virtual network, and VPCS are isolated from each other

• You can flexibly control the incoming and outgoing traffic to cloud resources in a VPC using security group rules and access control whitelists

• You can create different subnets in a VPC and connect the VPC to a local data center or other VPCS to expand the network architecture

In general, the VPC Intranet is the infrastructure of Ali Cloud, providing security and connectivity advantages for customers’ services deployed on the cloud.

This section describes the differences between public network performance tests and VPC performance tests

This section describes the differences between the public network performance test and the VPC Intranet performance test. From the perspective of the tested service, the difference between the public network performance test and the VPC Intranet performance test depends on the traffic source.

• Public network performance test: The traffic originates from the public network. Multiple carrier network devices may be involved in the routing process

• VPC internal network performance test: The traffic originates from the VPC internal network. Network routing involves only the VPC internal switch and is invisible to external networks

Because the traffic sources of the two devices are different, the routes of the two devices are different. Public network performance test traffic flows through the public network, but VPC Intranet performance test traffic flows only through the VPC Intranet.

VPC Intranet performance test scenarios

After understanding the differences between public network performance tests and VPC Intranet performance tests, when do WE need to perform VPC Intranet performance tests? There are mainly the following occasions:

1. Services are sensitive to security and cannot be opened to public networks, such as finance, insurance and other businesses with high security requirements

During the performance test, you can whiten the IP address of the pressing machine to isolate other public network access, but the solution of completely isolating the public network from the VPC Intranet provides stronger security.

2. During the performance test of new service development, the impact of network environment on performance test results should be simplified and the performance of the service should be separately evaluated.

Microservices architecture is very popular nowadays. At each microservices development stage, it may involve performance testing for service load conditions to assess the load ceiling of each service, which requires the ability to initiate performance testing quickly in the customer development environment. However, traditional performance tests on the public network require customers to open the services to be tested to the public network, which brings security risks and increases the execution cost of performance tests. In the VPC Intranet, performance tests for microservices can be quickly launched during development.

3. Evaluate the performance of alicloud Intranet services. Alicloud basic products, such as RDS and MQ, are basic components of customer services and are not accessible to the public network.

4. The performance test saves costs. Compared with public network bandwidth costs, the VPC Intranet performance test is performed exclusively on the VPC Intranet and does not incur additional network bandwidth costs.

When a public network initiates a performance test, a large number of public network bandwidth flows are generated for the service to be tested, resulting in a large amount of public network bandwidth costs. However, the VPC Intranet performance test is performed exclusively on the customer’S VPC Intranet. Therefore, the test cost is significantly lower than that of a public network performance test.

How do I initiate a VPC Intranet performance test

How do I initiate a VPC Intranet performance test? It is recommended to know ali Cloud performance test service PTS[1].

After opening PTS service, users can go to the purchase page to purchase the Intranet pressure test resource package [2]. The minimum cost is 29 yuan to purchase the resource package of 100,000 VUM (supporting 10,000 concurrent tests for 10 minutes). After purchase, users can access the PTS console to view the corresponding resource package.

Then, you can create a performance test scenario based on the test requirements. This section uses HTTP as an example to describe how to create a PTS test scenario. When the customer enters the scenario editing page for the first time, the system prompts the customer to grant VPC access permission so that the PTS product can access the VPC information of the customer. Note That you can enter either a public domain name or an Intranet IP address for the pressure test address. Ensure that the corresponding IP address is in the switch network segment, so that the switch can access VPC internal services. For example, here is the pressure ALB:

Select the ali Cloud VPC Intranet from the pressure test source. The region, VPC, security group, and switch information must be the same as that of the service to be tested.

The debugging result shows that the performance test is successfully performed on the VPC Intranet.

This section describes the implementation principles of VPC Intranet performance testing

This section describes the principles of VPC Intranet performance test. Before performing a VPC Intranet performance test, ensure that the following conditions are met:

  1. Customers have enabled the VPC service and created VPC networks, switches, and security groups
  2. Enable servers in the VPC network and configure security group rules to ensure that services are accessible in the VPC network
  3. Enable the PTS service, purchase resource packages, and access the PTS console to authorize the PTS service to access the VPC service of the customer. In this way, the authorized service can access the VPC, switch, and security group services of the customer

After a scenario is constructed and a VPC Intranet performance test is initiated, the PTS side performs the following operations:

  1. Obtain the VPC information entered by the customer and create a free ENI elastic nic in the CUSTOMER’s VPC. [3]
  2. Mount the elastic network adapter created on the customer side to the PTS press machine
  3. Add routes to the customer’s switch network segment on a press machine so that the press machine can access services in the customer’s VPC
  4. Configure routing rules to prohibit access to public networks and ensure that traffic is sent only from the VPC Intranet
  5. Start the pressure test and send the request according to the customer configuration
  6. After stopping the pressure test, remove the elastic network adapter from the pressure machine and delete it

VPC Intranet performance test in multi-protocol mode

In addition to the VPC Intranet performance test that supports HTTP, PTS also supports other protocols and performance tests of ali Cloud basic products, such as MQTT, Reids, and MQ. Welcome to the PTS console to experience related functions.

Best practices for VPC Intranet performance testing

The performance test can be divided into single-link performance test and full-link performance test in terms of the range of tested links.

• Single-link performance test: The performance test covers only a part of links, and the test range is relatively accurate to verify the stability of a certain link. The number of participants in the test process is small, the execution cost is low, and the test can be executed many times to fully verify.

• Full-link performance test: all links that may be involved in the service are covered during the performance test. The test range is large enough to involve more upstream and downstream, ensuring that performance bottlenecks can be found globally and verifying global stability; The testing process involves a large number of participants, which is a complex system engineering with high execution cost and requires strict control of test times.

The cost of full-link performance testing is high. Therefore, you need to perform the full-link performance test only after each single-link performance test has passed several times. The frequency of single-link performance tests is high. Therefore, you are advised to use low-cost VPC Intranet performance tests to save performance test costs. After all single-link performance tests pass, configure services to open public network access and accept all service links through a full-link performance test on the public network.

VPC Intranet pressure test – Purchase season price special

Compared with the public network, the purchase cost of Intranet pressure test resource packages can be greatly reduced. The cost is only 1/10 of the public network pressure test resource packages.

And now in the procurement season, all specifications are 95% off oh, but also superimposed on the official website discount, as cardiac action, hurry to purchase!

A link to the

[1] Ali Cloud Performance Test Service PTS

www.aliyun.com/product/pts

[2] Purchase Intranet pressure test resource pack

Common-buy.aliyun.com/?commodityC…

[3] ENI Elastic network adapter

Help.aliyun.com/document_de…

Click here to purchase the Intranet pressure test resource pack.