gRPC Performance Testing Lab

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Make
• Go
• Java 21 (for JMeter DSL tests)

Quick start

1. Initialize the project:

make init

2. Start monitoring stack:

make docker/up

3. Run tests:

# Maximum load test with JMeter DSL
make test/max-load/jmeter

# Maximum load test with k6
make test/max-load/k6

# Run complete test cycle
make test/full-cycle

Makefile commands

Setup

make init              # Initialize project
make build             # Build all components
make proto             # Generate protobuf files

Testing

make test/max-load/jmeter     # Run max load test with JMeter
make test/max-load/k6         # Run max load test with k6
make test/reliability/jmeter  # Run reliability test with JMeter
make test/reliability/k6      # Run reliability test with k6
make test/full-cycle         # Run all tests

Infrastructure

make docker/up        # Start all containers
make docker/down      # Stop all containers
make clean            # Clean build artifacts
make clean/docker     # Clean docker resources
make clean/deep       # Deep clean (artifacts + docker)

Service endpoints

Service	Port	URL
gRPC Server	50052	localhost:50052
Prometheus	9090	http://localhost:9090
Grafana	3000	http://localhost:3000
InfluxDB	8086	http://localhost:8086
cAdvisor	8080	http://localhost:8080
Node Exporter	9100	http://localhost:9100

Resource Limits

Service	Memory	CPU
gRPC Server	2G	2
Prometheus	1G	-
InfluxDB	2G	1
cAdvisor	512M	-
Node Exporter	128M	-

Monitoring

Default Grafana credentials:

• URL: http://localhost:3000
• Username: admin
• Password: admin

Notes on monitoring

While the current monitoring setup provides core metrics for CPU, RAM, and gRPC-specific indicators, in a production environment, I would extend this with detailed network stack monitoring to better identify potential bottlenecks. For this demonstration, I focused on implementing the custom gRPC sampler for JMeter DSL and core performance metrics to meet the primary objectives while maintaining reasonable delivery timeframes.

Project structure

.
├── config/                    # Configuration files
│   ├── grafana/              # Grafana dashboards
│   ├── prometheus/           # Prometheus config
├── grpc-perf-lab/            # gRPC server
├── tests/                    # Test files
│   ├── jmeter-dsl/          # JMeter DSL tests
│   └── k6/                  # k6 test scripts
└── scripts/                  # Utility scripts

JVM options

Default JVM options for test execution:

-Xmx2g -Xms2g
-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=512m
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=100
-XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled