Optimizing tech infrastructure is important if you want to deliver high performing applications.
If you have been developing for some time, you may already be familiar with the importance of writing efficient code and having streamlined processes.
One of the most powerful things you have in your arsenal as an engineer is benchmarking and in this article we’re going to see how you can make use of it to fine tune your tech infrastructure to create more responsive, scalable and overall a much better application overall.
Understanding benchmarking in modern applications
The most common misconception about benchmarking is assuming it’s all about running performance tests. That is just one part of it; however, when you’re benchmarking, you are also measuring and comparing the performance of different components that your application is utilizing within your tech stack.
Things like response time, throughput, resource utilization etc are tested from within our system and we do that to zero in on any bottlenecks and other problems our system may have and from there it’s just a matter of fixing those problems and in doing so, the efficiency of our system goes up.
That’s not all! You can also use benchmarking to compare different tools or frameworks to see which one suits your application well, the performance of your application overtime and validate changes after a major update.
Why benchmarking matters
It’s hard to get sold on the importance of benchmarking if your application is small with not many users, however when your application starts to get millions of users, even a small accidental change can have a huge performance issue in your application, the first few steps into resolving that problem is benchmarking.
Benchmarking will help you identify bottlenecks in your performance so you can optimize your code and enhance that bit.
It gives you a better picture of your entire application so you can make the right and informed decision about how much resource to allocate to which area of your application.
By optimizing your application using the result of benchmarking, you can reduce your cost greatly which can be in thousands of dollars (if the application has a great number of users).
Finally, since all this leads to better performance, it has a direct impact on user experience which is what helps a business grow more than anything else.
Mistakes to avoid while benchmarking
Benchmarking requires experience with development and application designing. While it can do a lot for you, if not managed in the right way can also give you inaccurate results that will do you more harm than good.
One of the most common mistakes people do who are just getting started with this is setting up unrealistic test scenarios.
The goal of your benchmark should be to mimic real world conditions. Failing to do so will give you undesired results that are not only hard to make sense of but have great inaccuracy as well.
You also have to be super careful with the result as well and make sure you or someone from your team is not interpreting the result you got from benchmarking incorrectly. If one metric improves it doesn’t always mean that it will lift the performance of the entire system.
One prime example is optimizing for latency. While a lower latency can give you responses quickly but could also have other awful trade offs such as increased resource usage or worse, the cost.
Linking benchmarking to long term tech optimization goals
Benchmarking isn’t utilized for short term improvements only but it’s also a very important tool for aligning your short term optimization with the tech goals you have for your project in the long run. Therefore it’s important that you incorporate benchmarking in every development phase so your system continues to go forward with better efficiency and robustness.
The way benchmarking can help you with long term optimization is by using the methodology of continuous improvement overtime!
As your application adds more features and your users grow in numbers, you’re going to notice some performance bottleneck and benchmarking will be your best friend there that will help you with tracking these changes so your system can continue to run smoothly.
What to focus on during benchmarking?
While there’s many benefits of benchmarking, it is only beneficial if you’re focusing on the right metrics that provide crystal clear insights about your system performance. Of course every system is different, however there are some things that are common to every system which you can focus on.
One of them is response time which is important no matter what system you’re working on. This simply means how much time your system is taking to respond to a request. Whether you’re with an API or a fully fledged website, if the data is not coming in quickly which will adversely affect the user experience.
Another common thing is throughput which in layman terms is the number of operations your system can handle per unit of time which is another key metric for any system.
Other things you can check out for include how much resource your system is using, error rate, and scalability.
Conclusion
Benchmarking is a developer’s best friend who is looking to optimize their tech infrastructure.
With the benchmark result, you can make a lot of right decisions which in turn can save you a lot of time, energy and of course the cost and as a result you’ll have a much better system that is robust, efficient and can be scaled anytime without much hassle.