Simple Performance Testing for your Web App hosted in Microsoft Azure

Whether you have created an ASP.NET Web Application using the Visual Studio 2015 wizard and published it to Azure or you have uploaded some website files to a Web Application to Azure wouldn’t it be nice to have some way of performing a simple performance test to help you determine whether everything is alright with your sites landing page or some other portion of your site.

VS 2015 New Web Application Wizard

If you used the wizard above to create an ASP.NET Web Application and published it to Azure you should be able to open a browser and navigate to the new Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com to view your newly published Web Application.

Azure Web Applications Blade

One thing to take note of is the pricing tier, the Web Application I just published is listed as being in the “Free” Pricing Tier which under most circumstances would be okay.  The “Free” App Service Plan restricts the Performance Testing to forty (40) users and one (1) minute.

“Free” App Service Plan – Performance Testing Limits

“Free” App Service Plan – Performance Testing Limits

If you want to change the App Service Plan of your Web Application go to the Settings blade for your Web Application and under the App Service Plan section click App Service Plan to expose the configuration. Click on the Pricing Tier window to select a different plan.

App Service Plan

App Service Plans

Performance Testing of a Web Application requires you have linked a Visual Studio Online (VSO) account to your Azure subscription.  If you haven’t created a Visual Studio Online (VSO) account you can follow the steps here.  If you don’t know how to link a VSO account to Azure just follow the steps here.

Linked Visual Studio Online Account

Okay so if you’ve got all that sorted we can walk through creating a simple performance test for my web application.

Navigate to a Web Application in the new Azure Portal

Azure Web Application Blade

Click Tools in the toolbar

In the Develop section click on Performance Test

Note:  These are not filtered by Web Application at the moment so I will see all Performance Tests for all Web Applications in this subscription

Azure Web Application Performance Tests Blade

The toolbar buttons on the Performance Test blade will become enabled shortly and consists of three (3)

New performance test

buttons

• New
• Set Account (Choose an existing or Create a new Visual Studio Online Account to create performance tests)
• Feedback

Click the New button in the toolbar to create your first performance test where you can enter the following values

• URL (suffix the URL with the page or end point to be tested)
• Name
• Generate Load From
• User Load
• Duration (minutes)

Click the blue Run Test button to start your test.  Depending on the User Load it may take a few minutes to acquire resources to execute the test.

Simple Performance Test Results

Please give it a try and send the Web App Performance Testing Team feedback using the form or by email regarding your experience.