Easy Load Testing and Page Warming with k6, InfluxDB, and Grafana

Why This Setup?

• Developer-friendly: Fully containerized—no local install pain.
• Realistic testing: Reproduce real-world traffic stages.
• Visual feedback: Grafana updates in real-time.
• Bonus: Warms up caches and infrastructure before go-live.

The Architecture

  [ k6 script ] ─▶ [ InfluxDB ]
         │             ▲
         ▼             │
     Traffic     [ Grafana Dashboard ]
       ▼
    Your Website

Docker Compose Overview

Here’s a simplified version of our docker-compose.yml:

services:
  influxdb:
    image: influxdb:1.8
    ports:
      - "8086:8086"
    environment:
      - INFLUXDB_DB=k6

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED=true
    volumes:
      - ./dashboards:/var/lib/grafana/dashboards
      - ./grafana-dashboard.yaml:/etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dashboard.yaml
      - ./grafana-datasource.yaml:/etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources/datasource.yaml

  k6:
    image: loadimpact/k6:latest
    environment:
      - K6_OUT=influxdb=http://influxdb:8086/k6
    volumes:
      - ./scripts:/scripts

The Dashboard

Our Grafana dashboard includes:

• Virtual users
• Requests per second
• Error rates
• Latency (avg, p90, p95)
• Response time heatmaps

All powered by InfluxDB, pre-provisioned and refreshable in real-time.

The k6 Load Script

This script targets all key pages of Sengo.com to simulate load and warm up caches:

import http from 'k6/http';

export let options = {
  stages: [
    { duration: '15s', target: 25 },
    { duration: '5m', target: 85 },
    { duration: '3m', target: 105 },
    { duration: '3m', target: 75 },
    { duration: '15m', target: 155 },
    { duration: '3m', target: 100 },
    { duration: '1m', target: 0 }
  ]
};

export default function () {
  http.get('https://sengo.com/');
  http.get('https://sengo.com/fr/');
  // ...more endpoints
}

Monitor in Real Time

Open http://localhost:3000 to access your Grafana dashboard. You’ll see:

• RPS and error spikes
• Active users over time
• Latency distribution (p90, p95)

Page Warming Bonus

This script also acts as a page warmer—ensuring all your CDN and backend caches are populated ahead of critical events or traffic surges.

Pro Tips

• Use Grafana variables to toggle environments
• Embed this in your CI/CD pipeline
• Alert on slow pages or error spikes

TL;DR

Need help setting this up? Reach out to the Sengo team. We specialize in performance engineering for composable, headless, and modern web platforms.