Getting Started with Fortio for Load testing

We look at Fortio, which is a powerful load testing tool which is free and powered by Google's Go language.

It is a rightful successor to Vegeta which is favourite among Go developers.

Installing Fortio

1. Install go (golang 1.8 or later)
2. go get istio.io/fortio
3. you can now run fortio (from your gopath bin/ directory)

Docker
docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8079:8079 -d istio/fortio server # For the server

This open a web interface at http://localhost:8080/fortio/

As you can see, you can specify the percentiles for reporting, the TPS and the duration using the web interface. The command-line gives you more options but it is not as powerful as a Apache JMeter or Gatling . It does not support scenario based load testing

Things I like:

1. A simple web interface
2. Ability to share report and graphs

Things I don't like:

1. No support for scripts
2. No support for scenario bases load testing

Fortio is best suited for load testing where developers want to test their code locally on their desktop computers. It can also be used for simulating spikes.