Performance Issues when running "Skate Park" on ASP.NET Core SDK Starter Kit Under Load

[ivanbuzyka]

What happened?

Issue Summary
The headless application based on the Sitecore ASP.NET Core SDK Starter Kit exhibits poor performance under load testing. The application was deployed to 2 x P1V3 Azure App Service instances and connected to the Skate Park sample site in XM Cloud (production environment, live Edge endpoint).

A load test was conducted using Azure Load Testing with 250 simultaneous virtual users requesting the Home and /about pages. The test results indicate:

• Very high response times
• Low throughput (requests per second)

Comparison with Next.js App

To benchmark performance, a Next.js head application was also tested under the same conditions.

• Deployed to: 2 x P1V3 Azure App Service (Linux-based)
• Rendering mode: Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
• Connected to the same XMC site

The Next.js head app performed significantly better than the ASP.NET Core head app under the same load conditions.

Supporting Evidence
Load test results are attached for comparison.

Blue charts represent the ASP.NET Core app.
Red charts represent the Next.js app.
Expected Outcome
The ASP.NET Core head application should demonstrate similar or better performance than the Next.js counterpart under comparable deployment conditions. Further investigation is needed to identify and address the bottlenecks.

Steps to Reproduce

• Deploy the ASP.NET Core SDK Starter Kit to 2 x P1V3 Azure App Service (Windows-based).
• Connect it to an XM Cloud (Production) environment, live Edge endpoint.
• Execute an Azure Load Test with 250 simultaneous virtual users requesting the Home and /about pages.
• Compare response times and throughput with a Next.js SSR app deployed in a similar setup.

I'll downscale and keep the deployed apps, XMC environment for some time, let me know if you would like me to test something there or get more information.

Relevant log output

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[pbering]

Hi, thanks for doing this test! Some questions about the step "Deploy the ASP.NET Core SDK Starter Kit to 2 x P1V3 Azure App Service (Windows-based).":

1. Was it compiled in the release or debug configuration?
2. What was the logging configured to? For example, it see a ~4 x improvement in throughput locally between trace level and warning level