LoadView Cloud Load Injectors vs. Self-Managed (AWS, Azure, or On-Premise): Cost Considerations

When planning load tests with LoadView, organizations can choose between two deployment options:

• LoadView’s managed global cloud Load Injectors (LIs)
• Self-managed On-Prem Load Injectors, hosted on virtual machines (VMs) within your own AWS/Azure accounts or on on-premises infrastructure

Each option offers unique benefits depending on test scale, compliance needs, and budget. The breakdown below outlines these differences, with real cost examples to help illustrate the trade-offs.

LoadView Cloud Load Injectors

Advantages:

• Instant scalability and global reach—no setup time required.
• Minimal operational overhead—LoadView handles provisioning, patching, and scaling.
• Predictable pricing with included injector hours—ideal for burst or light usage.

Drawbacks:

• Limited customization (VM specs, networking).
• Less control over IP origin—potential compliance limitations.

Self-Managed Load Injectors (AWS, Azure, or On-Premise)

Advantages:

• Granular cost control and customization—tune VM specs, networking, OS.
• Reuse VMs for other purposes (DevOps, monitoring).
• Compliant traffic originating from your own infrastructure.
• Cheaper at scale due to lower unit costs.

Drawbacks:

• Operational overhead: provisioning, management, startup/shutdown logic required.
• Admin effort and cloud expertise needed.
• Limited geographic coverage depending on your Azure regions.

Cost Comparison: LoadView Cloud vs. Self-Managed Azure VMs

When launching Load Injectors in LoadView cloud, we provision virtual machines from Azure and AWS EC2 with the following specifications:

• OS: Windows Server 2022
• vCPUs: 8
• Memory: 16 GiB RAM

The table below shows estimated monthly costs (USD) for different scenarios, comparing LoadView cloud Load Injectors with equivalent Virtual Machines (VMs) in Azure US East (on-demand rate: $0.6510/hour, including OS license — source: Azure Pricing Calculator). These examples highlight the cost difference from a purely cloud-infrastructure perspective, illustrating how expenses may vary if you use only LoadView’s managed cloud versus running load injectors in your own cloud account. The numbers are approximate and provided for illustration purposes only. Your own cloud costs may vary.

Key Insights

• At lower frequencies of testing or resource usage (like 25–100 LI hours/month), LoadView load injectors are often cheaper due to included hours and zero setup.
• As usage scales beyond ~500 LI hours, Self-Managed load injectors become significantly more cost-effective.

Cost Factors to Consider When Testing On-Premises

When calculating the cost of on-premise testing, it’s essential to look beyond just the VM hourly rate. Here are the most important financial factors to include.

Cloud VM Costs (Azure/AWS): VM price vary by capacity. Make sure you choose the appropriate VM capacity upon final calculations.

Startup and Teardown Overhead: VMs often need to be started before and stopped after each test. This adds extra minutes of billing per test, which can accumulate significantly over hundreds of tests.

Data Center Location and Pricing Tiers: Cloud providers charge different rates depending on the region. Running tests from premium regions (e.g., West Europe, US East) may cost more than from lower-tier zones.

Volume Discounts and Reserved Instances: If you commit to long-term usage, both Azure and AWS offer discounts that can reduce VM costs by 30–70%. Consider this if you run tests regularly.

Management and Automation Overhead: If you’re scripting VM provisioning or using orchestration tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible), consider the time and cost of maintaining those systems.