Podcasts · TestGuild Automation Podcast

Locust and Azure Load Testing: Create and Debug Load Tests with AI with Lars Holmberg and Abhinav Premsekhar

6 Oct 2026 · 36 min · Episode 607

Performance testing has never been easier to start, or more important to get right. As teams ship more AI generated code, performance problems are slipping through, and they tend to surface during your highest traffic moments.

In this episode, Joe Colantonio talks with Lars Holmberg, lead maintainer of the open source Locust project, and Abhinav Premsekhar of Microsoft's Azure App Testing team. They explain how AI is changing load testing, from script creation to results analysis.

You'll see live demos of Azure Load Testing, including:

• Quick URL based tests for beginners • Running existing JMeter and Locust scripts at scale • A browser extension that records user journeys and generates load test scripts automatically • Creating a Locust test from a Postman collection with the Azure Load Testing extension for VS Code

Abhinav also walks through a real failed test run, showing how client side metrics, server side metrics, and AI insights work together to locate a backend bottleneck and recommend a fix.

The conversation also covers why developers are moving from JMeter to Locust, how OpenTelemetry tracing can cut debugging time from weeks to hours, why functional testers shouldn't fear load testing, and a first look at AIO Locust, a modern async Locust alternative built on free threaded Python.

Whether you're a seasoned performance engineer or running your first load test, you'll leave with practical ways to find bottlenecks before your customers do.

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)