Hi Łukasz!
It's great that you're conducting load tests! This is essential to ensure that your Moodle can support a large number of users without compromising performance. Now, regarding your test, I'd like to help you better understand the results and perhaps adjust a few details.
When running a load test, it's important to keep in mind a few details that can significantly impact performance and the results you obtained. The first point is whether the tests are being done with bots or browsers. This makes all the difference! When tests are done with bots, PHP is loaded without loading all the assets on the page (such as JavaScript, images, CSS, etc.), which greatly reduces the load on the machine. However, when you're testing with a real browser, it has to load everything, and the load on the server can be much higher because the browser is also performing many other processes, such as rendering graphic elements, executing scripts, and much more.
Another important point you should check is whether the browser cache is being used. The cache can greatly help with performance, as it prevents files from being downloaded repeatedly during navigation, thereby reducing the impact on network and server usage.
Oh, and it's always good to think about the frequency of user navigation! If users are accessing long courses with videos and large texts, navigation will be slower because it will take longer to load the pages. This is very different from a short course, which requires more clicks between screens. User behavior can directly affect server performance during the load test.
So, to improve your test even more, I suggest you review these points and see if something can be adjusted to reflect a more realistic usage scenario. This might help you find the perfect balance to support 1800 simultaneous users without overloading your infrastructure!
We're here to help with anything you need, so feel free to share more details or ask any other questions! 😄
Eduardo Kraus
Teacher and Programmer