Page 1 of 5

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at

http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/

ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 02 Issue 08

AUGUST 2016

Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 510

Standardization of Stress Test Protocol for successful implementation of

Agricultural Applications – A Study at ICRISAT

VV Sumanthkumar1

1Scientist from International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru,

Hyderabad.

Introduction

The new Sustainable Development Goals have once again underlined the importance of

agriculture development if want to achieve global food & nutrition security and end poverty. On

one side the agriculture is effected with myriad of challenges like climate change which is

effecting agricultural production and productivity. To mitigate the major challenges and making

the farmer resilient to these negative forces, provision of knowledge and services directly to the

farmers is one of the important aspect which certainly cannot be ignored. The advances in

computing hardware and ICT infrastructure really allowing to implement knowledge as well as

services directly to the farmers. The current ICT infrastructure in rural village is improving with

advancement of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN). NOFN which is popularly called as

Bharat Broadband to connecting all revenue villages (Gram Panchayats) of India with 100 Mbps

band width. Infrastructure in villages is improving but still there are challenges with respect to

network in rural areas. It is ideal to keep optimal resources at server side so that farmer gets

response quickly which keeps him attached and attracted to the application and thus the adoption

of application increases. ICRISAT is in the process of designing many spatial applications to

different clients. As a process of building successful applications, there is need to standardize

and optimize computing resources at server side. An attempt has been made towards this

direction by developing a protocol for stress test which can be used to optimize the resources

while developing agricultural applications for masses.

Discussion:

The paper especially discusses about following key initiatives and learning from it: When any

organization builds huge application which requires a data center typically follows setup so as to

serve the millions of small holder farmers. The below is the generic layout followed.

Page 2 of 5

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at

http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/

ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 02 Issue 08

AUGUST 2016

Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 511

But there are instances where requirements may vary based on the data stored, processed and

accessed by the end user. One important factor is whether the application stores spatial data or

non-spatial data. GIS applications which processes spatial data generally requires more resources

when compared to MIS applications which deals with non-spatial data. The protocol is

developed to finalize the ideal resources required for a GIS application which hosts spatial data.

Generally, the GIS project intends to support in the planning process through characterization of

natural resources, establishment of a digital library thus enabling all spatial and non-spatial data

related to Micro watershed and agricultural fields to all stakeholders through role based access

over web. Land information being critical for above, it is to proposed to develop a dynamic state- of-art GIS based Land Resource Inventory (LRI) Geoportal which can ingest, organize, manage

and disseminate data from multiple sources (spatial and non-spatial) for enhancing decision

support to the stakeholders including planning and sustainable development of land resources for

various applications. The proposed system shall serve as a common operational platform

providing actionable intelligence and situational awareness to all its stakeholders. The proposed

system is also expected to meet the national / state level objectives in regard to sustainable

development of agriculture, disaster planning and recovery, infrastructure planning and natural

resources assessment and allocation, rural development, education, etc. As this application

involves intensive data transmission from central database to end user, it is essential to make sure

that data retrieved quickly without delay. This is essential for making the application adopted by

different stakeholders of the project successfully.

Page 3 of 5

Journal for Studies in Management and Planning

Available at

http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/

ISSN: 2395-0463

Volume 02 Issue 08

AUGUST 2016

Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 512

To make sure that sufficient computing resources are available at cloud, we have conducted a

stress test with the following server configurations for different servers like Open Source Geo

Server and Server that generates Load.

Description Processor RAM Storage OS /

Software

Open Source

Geoserver

2 Xeon

(4 Cores)

2.5 GHz

16 GB 1.9 TB JBOSS

Application

Server

Load Generator

Server

Dual Xeon

3.16 GHz

4 GB 500 GB JMeter Load

Generator

There are so many load generators are available like Tsung and JMeter are available. The

Apache JMeterTM application is open source software, a pure Java application designed to load

test functional behavior and measure performance. JMeter has been widely adopted and is now a

popular open-source alternative to proprietary solutions like Silk Performer and LoadRunner. It

is a cross platform and can run on any platform with Java.

Key features of JMeter

 Load and performance test various server/protocol types including http/https,

SOAP/RESTful Webservices, FTP, DB via JDBC, LDAP, Mail, MongoDB, Native

commands/shell scripts and TCP.

 Cross-platform – can run on any OS with Java

 Multithreading framework – allows concurrent sampling

 Faster test plan building and debugging – can be integrated with the test plan; ability to

create a functional test plan

 User-friendly UI

 Easy integration with major Build and Continuous Integration systems – this makes

Jmeter a well-fitted part of whole Software Development Life Cycle

Methodology and Bechmark:

The JMeter Load Runner controller was configured to increase by 25 users every 90 seconds

until there were 500 users, and then run at that user load for 10 minutes. The Server instance