Introduction & Getting Started with k6

Performance testing has grown into a critical pillar of modern engineering, and k6 has quickly become a favorite tool thanks to its speed, simplicity, and developer-friendly workflow.

This first post sets the stage for the full series: what you’ll learn, how the articles flows, and how to get your environment ready so you’re prepared for the hands-on work ahead.

Table of contents

What This Series Will Cover

Over few weeks, you’ll move from basic scripting all the way to building a complete performance testing suite. Each post will build on the last with clear examples, walkthroughs, and exercises. By the end, you’ll be comfortable modeling realistic workloads, analyzing results, scaling tests across distributed systems, and integrating everything into automated pipelines.

The focus areas include:

• Core k6 concepts
• Script structure and modularization
• Test scenarios and workload modeling
• Metrics, thresholds, and analysis
• CI/CD integration
• Distributed and large-scale testing
• Extensions, observability, and dashboards
• Designing maintainable performance test suites

This post sets up everything you’ll need to start.

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing evaluates how a system behaves under various forms of load. It answers questions like:

• How fast is the system?
• How stable is it under pressure?
• Where do bottlenecks appear?
• What happens as the number of users grows?

Why k6?

k6 stands out because:

• It’s scriptable in JavaScript
• It’s fast and resource-efficient
• It models complex workloads with simple configuration
• It integrates cleanly into pipelines and distributed systems
• It generates rich metrics without heavy setup

This series assumes you already understand the basics of performance testing. If not, you’ll still be able to follow along and learn quickly through practical examples.

It’s fundamentally about predictability—ensuring software behaves reliably when demand spikes or patterns shift.

Environment Setup

Before diving deeper, install everything you need.

1. Install k6 on your machine

Run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install k6

or go to K6’s official installation guide and install based on your preferred package manager.

Verify:

k6 version

2. Choose an Editor

VS Code works well due to its extensions for JavaScript and testing workflows.

3. Create a Working Directory

This directory will store all blog-series scripts:

mkdir k6-course
cd k6-course

Run Your First Script

Create a file hello.js in k6-course directory:

import http from 'k6/http';

export default function () {
  http.get('https://test.k6.io');
}k6-course/hello.js

What we did:

1. Imported the http from K6 module as we will use it to hit given api.
2. export default function () { ... } is the function every virtual user executes repeatedly for the test duration.
3. As we are hitting GET endpoint/page, we can use http.get method

Now Run:

k6 run hello.js

The script would run with 1 user as a default and give you some nice statistics like:

• request count
• duration metrics
• checks
• iterations

This confirms everything is installed and ready.

Exercises

Try these quick steps:

• Modify the script to hit a different endpoint.
• Add a loop to make multiple requests.
• Check how the summary output changes.