Resilience testing is a type of testing that is focused on ensuring that a system can recover from failures or disruptions. It involves intentionally causing failures or disruptions in the system and observing how the system responds.
The goal of resilience testing is to identify and fix any vulnerabilities that could cause the system to fail or become unavailable in the event of a real-world failure or disruption.
Resilience testing is often used to evaluate the performance of systems that are critical to the operation of an organization, such as web applications, databases, and servers. By testing the resilience of these systems, organizations can ensure that they are able to continue operating even in the event of failure or disruption.
Resilience testing can be done manually or using automated testing tools. It is typically performed as part of the testing process during the development of a system, but it can also be done on an ongoing basis to ensure the system’s continued resilience.
Example of resilience testing
Imagine that you are testing the resilience of a web application that allows users to purchase products online. To test the resilience of the application, you might perform the following steps:
- Set up the test environment: Configure the test environment to simulate a real-world scenario, including the hardware and software required to run the application.
- Identify potential failure points: Identify the parts of the system that are most likely to fail or be disrupted, such as the database or payment gateway.
- Cause failures or disruptions: Intentionally cause failures or disruptions in the identified parts of the system. For example, you might simulate a network outage or shut down the database to see how the application responds.
- Observe the system’s behavior: Monitor the system as it recovers from the failures or disruptions, and record any issues or vulnerabilities that are identified.
- Analyze the results: Analyze the results of the testing to identify any issues or vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.
- Fix any issues: Fix any issues that were identified during the testing process to improve the resilience of the system.
By following these steps, you can test the resilience of a system and identify and fix any vulnerabilities that could cause the system to fail or become unavailable in the event of a real-world failure or disruption.
Resilience Testing is different from Reliability Testing
Resilience testing is focused on ensuring that a system can recover from failures or disruptions. It involves intentionally causing failures or disruptions and observing how the system responds
A good example of resilience testing will be – A user is in the process of processing the payment and the internet goes off. How will the system recover and what will happen after the network is back
Reliability testing, on the other hand, is focused on evaluating the consistency and dependability of a system. It involves running the system for an extended period of time, often under heavy load, to see how it performs over timeE.g. will be to check how consistent is the system/app when a large volume of users using the payment processing system for long durations
