Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

JMeter tests loads and measures performance of static and dynamic resources

Test Fast and Break Stuff

Article from ADMIN 66/2021

By Christopher Dock

The JMeter specialized integrated development environment applies test scripts for load testing and performance evaluation and supports various protocols that come in handy for Internet-powered applications.

Even if you know your website can handle a load of 30 users a second or that more than 500 users causes a small fire in the data center, the big question is: Will the next release work under the same load? Finding an answer to this question offers peace of mind when getting ready to put up a new version of your software live in the middle of the Christmas season.

When I first started down this path, it did not take much to imagine that I might not have enough power on my laptop or that the test server could run out of connections – but none of that happened. What I did discover was configuration errors in my Apache setup in the test environment.

Testing can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me, it comes down to testing Internet applications and services when under high load, which usually means testing REST APIs or connecting to and stepping through various scenarios on a website. Some fairly pricey solutions from software vendors can assist in this process (e.g., LoadRunner), but the good news is that the open source world has come up with some pretty compelling solutions of their own.

I first learned about JMeter [1] while looking for solutions for my LoadRunner problems. From the Internet, I found that JMeter users also had some testing issues, but in general, they were all quite glad to get away from LoadRunner. Inspired to take a closer look, I took JMeter out for a test spin.

Understanding JMeter Scripts

After opening JMeter, you start with an empty testing project. To support your tests, you need to add a few building blocks. The first step is to add a thread group by right clicking on Test Plan in the left pane and selecting Threads (Users) | Thread Group (Figure 1). A thread group controls how many threads (users) are used

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).