Session Record — 2026-02-10 14:30

Topic: k6 Load Testing Baseline on Raspberry Pi

What We Did

1. Set up k6 load testing on Raspberry Pi — Created a ~/k6-tests/ directory with 3 test scripts and a runner.

2. Wrote 3 k6 test scripts targeting give-qa-cf.berkeley.edu:

3. discovery.js — 7-endpoint browse flow simulating a donor exploring the site:

   1. Homepage /
   2. Featured funds /api/funds/featured/
   3. Search /api/searchresults?search=<term> (random from 5 terms)
   4. Fund page /fund/<id> (random from 5 fund IDs)
   5. Area details /areadetails?slug=<slug>
   6. Billing countries /billing/countries
   7. Suggested funds /api/funds/suggested/
   8. Default: 10 VUs, 2 min. Thresholds: p(95) < 3s, error rate < 10%.

4. checkout.js — Full checkout flow (up to gift create POST):

   1. Homepage (session + CSRF)
   2. Fund page with cart params
   3. Gift details page
   4. Billing page
   5. Billing countries + subregion
   6. POST /api/cybersource/gift/create with CSRF token
   7. Default: 5 VUs, 2 min. Note: can't test CyberSource iframe without a real browser.

5. stress.js — Combined 80/20 discovery/checkout mix with ramp stages:

   • 0→50 VUs (2 min), hold 50 (5 min), 50→100 (2 min), 100→0 (1 min)
   • Thresholds: p(95) < 2s, error rate < 5%

6. Wrote run-tests.sh — Runner script with modes: smoke, discovery, checkout, stress, all. Saves timestamped results to ~/k6-tests/results/.

7. Ran baseline tests — 3 test runs saved:

#### Smoke Test 1 (smoke_20260210_143428.txt) — 1 VU, 10s - FAILED thresholds: error rate 100%, p(95) = 4.32s - Fund page check failed (0/1) — likely hit a nonexistent fund ID - Search was extremely slow: avg 5.98s - Homepage: avg 195.92ms - Featured: avg 454.27ms - Overall http_req_duration: avg 1.07s, p(95) 4.32s

#### Smoke Test 2 (smoke_20260210_143542.txt) — 1 VU, 10s - PASSED all thresholds - All 7 checks passed (100%) - Search: avg 1.24s (much better than test 1) - Homepage: avg 253.77ms - Featured: avg 436.85ms - Fund page: avg 363.98ms - Overall http_req_duration: avg 432.01ms, p(95) 1.0s

#### Stress Test (stress_20260210_143657.txt) — 0→100 VUs, 10 min - Output truncated at 9m32s (95% complete, 586 iterations + 3 interrupted) - At peak load (100 VUs), search endpoint started timing out: Request Failed: Get "https://give-qa-cf.berkeley.edu/api/searchresults?search=research": request timeout Request Failed: Get "https://give-qa-cf.berkeley.edu/api/searchresults?search=scholarship": request timeout - No summary metrics available (output cut off before THRESHOLDS section) - Search is clearly the bottleneck under load

Key Findings

• Search is the bottleneck: Even at 1 VU, search can take 6s. Under stress, it times out entirely.
• Homepage and fund pages are fast: Sub-400ms even without Cloudflare caching active.
• Stress test output was truncated — the terminal or tee command cut off before the k6 summary section. Need to investigate whether the test completed or was OOM-killed on the Pi.

Files on Raspberry Pi

~/k6-tests/
├── discovery.js          # Browse/search flow (10 VUs, 2 min)
├── checkout.js           # Checkout flow with gift create (5 VUs, 2 min)
├── stress.js             # 80/20 mix, ramp 0→50→100→0 (10 min)
├── run-tests.sh          # Runner: smoke|discovery|checkout|stress|all
└── results/
    ├── smoke_20260210_143428.txt    # Smoke 1: FAILED (search slow, fund 404)
    ├── smoke_20260210_143542.txt    # Smoke 2: PASSED (all endpoints OK)
    └── stress_20260210_143657.txt   # Stress: truncated at 95%, search timeouts

Next Steps

• [ ] Re-run stress test and ensure full output is captured (pipe to file, check for OOM)
• [ ] Re-run discovery test with Cloudflare caching active (post-cache-rule deployment) to compare against baseline
• [ ] Investigate search endpoint performance — likely needs DB query optimization or caching
• [ ] Add k6 checkout test with more realistic session handling