Load Testing the MSNBC 2002 Winter Olympics Web Site

When the Canadian pairs figure skating controversy erupted during the 2002 Winter Olympics, TV viewers hit the MSNBC Web site with a fury. But the site was ready and responded without a hitch due to the carefully planned and executed load testing of the voting applications. The MSNBC site received four to five million visitors a day with sudden bursts of traffic due to breaking news. In this session, Suzanne Wagstaff reviews the process she used for planning and preparing to test the MSNBC site, revealing a performance test methodology that works for any scale Web site. Learn about hardware profiling and a process that identifies distributed and on-site risks, including software, hardware, and personnel, to ensure a successful application rollout.

• A scalable methodology for performance testing
• How to identify performance and load risks prior to testing
• An example of a large, distributed testing project