Stress testing

Stress testing is a specific kind of performance testing. Where performance testing works on speed, responsiveness and reliability in general (although usually under normal circumstances), stress testing is trying to find the breaking point. How does the system behave in peak moments, how does it handle large amounts of data or big files, does it 'fail gracefully'? 
In stress testing we try to determine the limit of the application, the areas that might break under heavy stress and how well a system recovers after failure.