Stress testing tests the software with a focus to check that the software does not crashes if the hardware resources(like memory,CPU,Disk Space) are not sufficient.
Stress testing puts the hardware resources under extensive levels of stress in order to ensure that software is stable in a normal environment.
In stress testing we load the software with large number of concurrent users/processes which can not be handled by the systems hardware resources.
Stress Testing is a type of performance testing and it is a non-functional testing.
Examples:
- Stress Test of the CPU will be done by running software application with 100% load for some days which will ensure that the software runs properly under normal usage conditions.
- Suppose you have some software which has minimum memory requirement of 512 MB RAM then the software application is tested on a machine which has 512 MB memory with extensive loads to find out the system/software behavior.