K6 test using custom client libraries

[geoaxis]

Hello folks, I am newbie to k6 and come from Jmeter background.

I am part of a team that is building GRPC based .NET and Java client libraries. We have decided to only give out client libraries for our application. I would like to stress test the server application using the client libraries and k6 (and k6 operator) sounded promising.

However I don’t see that there is a way to call up Java or .NET code directly.

Can you share some ideas how you would use k6 with .net and java code.

I have glanced at GitHub - grafana/xk6-docker: k6 extension for interacting with Docker containers and images from a test script. and GitHub - grafana/xk6-exec: A k6 extension for running external commands. and wondering if that is the right way to approach this (i.e create a binary or docker images of my application and then call those)

Is there any consideration to metrics collection that you would like to share?

Thanks

Hatim

[eyeveebee]

Hi @geoaxis

Welcome to the community forum

I would use k6 to test the GRPC server applications and skip the client .NET and Java clients. If that is the goal.

I would recommend you have a look at how to use GRPC with k6:

• gRPC | Grafana k6 documentation
• Performance testing gRPC services

k6 also supports unary gRPC requests to the k6/net/grpc built-in module and the experimental one.

Your answer about how to run k6 depends on where you need to run it.

• If it’s locally, you can directly install and run k6, or you can run it with docker just buy using the docker image directly. The docs I linked have examples of that.

  

• If you need to integrate into your CI/CD, we usually resort to the same docker images that are released as well, and you can have a look at Integrations & Tools | Grafana k6 documentation for the different options.

For reports & metrics collection, it will depend on your needs.

• You might be happy with just the end-of-test summary
• Or, most often, you’ll want to send metrics to a time-series database like Prometheus. See all the built-in outputs available at Results output | Grafana k6 documentation.
  • You could also use other output extensions (see the list Explore k6 extensions | Grafana k6 documentation). The choice of where to send those is usually on you, depending on your preferences and if you already have some available.

Those are also good reads to get you started:

• Get started with k6 tutorial.
• Understanding Grafana k6 blog.

I hope this helps

Cheers!

[geoaxis]

thank you for the tips. They are indeed helpful in my journey to learn GRPC

The main issue I have is that the product I am working with has taken a very strategic decision of only using packaged Java and .NET clients. . This means that there is a lot of logic that is part of the client libraries. Technically it is possible for me to create programs that are called by exec scripts to create a load test and implement some sort of end of test summary.