K6 load test monitoring with Netdata

Monitors the impact of load testing experiments performed with K6.

You can read more about the metrics that K6 sends in the K6 documentation.

Requirements#

When running the k6 experiment, specify a StatsD output.
- Tip: K6 currently supports tags only with datadog output, which is in essence StatsD. Netdata can be used with both.

Metrics#

HTTP Requests#

Number of HTTP requests that K6 generates, per second.

Failed HTTP Requests#

Number of failed HTTP requests that K6 generates, per second.

Virtual Active Users#

Current number of active virtual users.

Iteration Duration#

The time it took K6 to complete one full iteration of the main function.

Dropped Iterations#

The number of iterations that could not be started either due to lack of Virtual Users or lack of time.

Data#

The amount of data received and sent.

TTP Requests total duration#

The total duration it took for a round-trip of an HTTP request. It includes:

Blocked HTTP requests: time spent blocked before initiating the request
Connecting HTTP requests: time spent establishing TCP connection to the remote host
Sending HTTP requests: time spent sending data to the remote host
Receiving HTTP requests: time spent receiving data from the remote host
Waiting HTTP requests: time spent waiting for response from the remote host

HTTP duration metrics#

Different metrics on the HTTP request as defined by K6. The HTTP request duration is defined by K6 as: HTTP sending request + HTTP receiving request + HTTP waiting request.

Metrics:

Median
Average
Max
Min
95th percentile
absolute (the value as it is, without any computation)

Configuration#

The collector is preconfigured and defined in statsd.plugin/k6.conf.

Due to being a StatsD collector, you only need to define the configuration file and then send data to Netdata using the StatsD protocol.

If Netdata is running on the same machine as K6, no further configuration is required. Otherwise, you will have to point K6 to your node and make sure that the K6 process can reach Netdata.

The default namespace that is used in the configuration is k6. If you change it in K6, you will have to change it as well in the configuration file k6.conf.