.NET Architecture & System Design Interview Question #195

What is stress testing?

Deployment, Cloud Operations, SRE & Senior System Design Scenarios Senior Advanced

Quick Interview Answer

Stress testing deliberately pushes a system beyond expected capacity to determine where it fails and how it behaves under extreme load.

Detailed Explanation

Stress testing deliberately pushes a system beyond expected capacity to determine where it fails and how it behaves under extreme load.

The objective is not only to find the maximum throughput but also to verify graceful degradation, recovery, protection mechanisms, and whether overload causes data corruption or cascading failure.

Code Example

Normal load -> stable
Higher load -> saturated
Extreme load -> controlled failure

Then reduce load:
Does the system recover?