Brent Ozar shares some of the trouble you might run into when database load testing:
Managers think that to simulate more load, they can just take the production queries and replay them multiple times, simultaneously, from the replay tool. We’ve already talked about how you can’t reliably replay deletes, but even inserts and updates cause a problem.
Say we’re load testing Stack Overflow queries, and our app does this:
UPDATE dbo.Users
SET Reputation = Reputation + 1
WHERE Id = 22656;If try to simulate more load by running that exact same query from 100 different sessions simultaneously, we’re just going to end up with lock contention on that particular user’s row. We’ll be troubleshooting a blocking problem, not the problem we really have when 100 different users run that same query.
Click through for several issues you can run into and Brent’s advice.