VCR: Virtual Capture and Replay for Performance Testing

This paper proposes a novel approach to performance testing, called Virtual Capture and Replay (VCR), that cou-ples a capture-and-replay technique with the checkpointing capabilities provided by the latest virtualization technolo-gies. VCR enables software performance testers to auto-matically take a snapshot of a running system when certain critical conditions are verified, and to replay the scenario that led to those conditions. Several separate in-depth anal-yses can be carried out in the laboratory just by rewind-ing the scenario and replaying it using different probes and analysis tools.