A very brief introduction to web application load/stress testing with Apache JMeter

1. (c) 2010 agilitator.com
A
Really
Really
Really
Basic Introduction
into
Load & Stress Testing
with Apache JMeter

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Performance, Load and
Stress Testing Objectives
Performance
Find bottlenecks, and establish a baseline
for the system operational load
Load
Profile the system's behavior under the top
load it was designed to work under
Stress
Attempt to break the system by
overwhelming its resources

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All of the above (and more)
“Apache JMeter is an open source 100%
pure Java desktop application designed to
load test functional behavior and measure
performance. It was originally designed for
testing Web Applications but has since
expanded to other test functions.”
Source:
http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

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Let’s get started
Download
JMeter from Apache Website
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/download
s/downloads_jmeter.cgi
For *nix systems:
For Windows:
.tgz archive
.zip archive
Extract
archive into a local directory
Navigate to jakarta-jmeter-2.*.*bin
directory
Launch JMeter GUI (make sure that Java
is installed on your computer..)
jmeter.bat (Windows)
jmeter.sh (*nix)

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JMeter on Windows

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Apache JMeter GUI

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Add a Thread Group

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Meet your testers
• 100 simultaneous users
• activated at the rate 10 per second
• runs only once

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Sampling – what?
Samplers describe your test target – what, where and how.
HTTP Request access web site over – what else – HTTP !

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An HTTP Request
There are quite a few options to be configured… For this
basic introduction let’s keep things simple

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Filling in the blanks
At the very least, you need to supply the following:
• URL for the website you are going to test
• Port # - default is 80 (and you may leave it blank)
• the page/directory to send request to (“/” stands for root)

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Can I run my tests now?
As a matter of fact – you can!
The catch?
You would not get any results back.
You need to add a
LISTENER
to display the information
you'll be getting back

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Adding a Listener
Summary Report is one of the most basic ones;
it displays data in a table format

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A Summary Report:
what you see is what you
get
Nothing to configure here, though you might want to supply a
file name to where the results of the test might be saved.
By default, the file will be written to jakarta-jmeter-2.*.*bin
directory; use the browse button to specify different location
NB: if file does not exist already, JMeter will pop up an error message:
“Could not open the file”. Ignore it, the file will be created in the
specified directory after first run

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Save your test plan
Before you run your test you have to save the
configuration; it is saved into a file with JMX
extension

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Run the test, sit back
and observe results!
After running your test several times, you’ll notice that
historic results begin to accumulate in the table. To clear
the slate use Run > Clear menu option (or press CtrlShift-E)

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Making (some) sense
out of the results
amazon.com
• you’ve run total of 100 samples – HTTP requests to
amazon.com
• average response time – 920 milliseconds
• min, max and standard deviation values are also
provided
• on average you’ve received 89698.6 bytes per page
• no errors – page faults
google.com
testing google.com with same parameters yield 23
milliseconds average response time, with 10 times
less data transfer

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Just Scratching the Surface!
What this really, really, really basic introduction did not cover?
Why, everything else!

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Next steps
There are 20+ samplers, 15+ listeners, pre- and
post-processors, assertions, timers, schedulers
as well as several configuration options for each.
(And we haven’t even touched
the Workbench!... )
Get more of JMeter on:
http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

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