Application load testing company BlazeMeter has extended its JMeter cloud tool to now perform high-volume testing of interactive Facebook applications.

Designed to provide application testing functions for "complex and highly realistic, load-intensive scenarios", BlazeMeter aims to analyze the performance and scalability of apps which (in the case of Facebook) will typically need to serve extremely high volumes of users with zero tolerance for slow response or downtime.

BlazeMeter claims to be able to reduce the time to test extra-large capacity applications from days or weeks to minutes. Its performance testing cloud handles "intricate load" scenarios, complex scripts, and rich applications to simulate traffic that represents tens of thousands of concurrent users.

"When developing applications for Facebook, you hope the application will go viral and you also fear it will go viral, so capacity testing is critical," stated Mike Valenty, technical director of Double Jump Games, a San Diego start-up in the social game space. "Waiting to provision dozens of test servers and manage the intricacies of distributing large scale load tests is too costly and simply unrealistic in traditional IT environments."

Users are able to run tests on demand, using any desired size or configuration. In addition, every user receives a dedicated environment per test, providing a cluster of up to 60 servers comprised of dual and quad core servers with up to 15 GB of memory each — and the geo-location of their choice.