1. A method comprising: defining, in a first synthetic application definition, a first plurality of resource consumptions, wherein the first plurality of resource consumptions are equivalent to consumptions by a first candidate application; defining, in a second synthetic application definition, a second plurality of resource consumptions, wherein the second plurality of resource consumptions are equivalent to consumptions by a second candidate application; distributing the first synthetic application definition to a first synthetic application in a node of a computing system; distributing the second synthetic application definition to a second synthetic application in the node of the computing system; consuming, with the first synthetic application and based on the first synthetic application definition, a first plurality of quantities of resources of a first plurality of nodes of the computing system; consuming, with the second synthetic application and based on the second synthetic application definition, a second plurality of quantities of resources of a second plurality of nodes of the computing system; recording a performance of the first synthetic application and a performance of the second synthetic application; evaluating the computing system based upon the recorded performances.