Soak testing

Soak testing involves testing a system with a typical production load, over a continuous availability period, to validate system behavior under production use.

It may be required to extrapolate the results, if not possible to conduct such an extended test. For example, if the system is required to process 10,000 transactions over 100 hours, it may be possible to complete processing the same 10,000 transactions in a shorter duration (say 50 hours) as representative (and conservative estimate) of the actual production use. A good soak test would also include the ability to simulate peak loads as opposed to just average loads. If manipulating the load over specific periods of time is not possible, alternatively (and conservatively) allow the system to run at peak production loads for the duration of the test.