Apache JMeter is one of the most popular tools for load testing and scaling out your JMeter test plan on the cloud in RedLine13 is easy. In this video and subsequent guide, we will walk you through running you first JMeter test on RedLine13.
Getting Started
When running a Jmeter test on RedLine13, we begin by logging into our account, hitting “Start Test”, and then navigate to the “JMeter” Tab.
Obviously we will need a JMeter test prepared beforehand. In this example, I created a simple JMeter test for Slack.com. I made the test to have the users click around and navigate their site (I used our Selenium to JMeter Firefox plugin). For this test we simulated 300 users (threads) to hit the site, then making a bunch of requests. The test will take 4 seconds to ramp up and then run only once:
Upload Your Test Plan & Configure Test
Then you simply upload your created JMeter test plan to RedLine13, select the number of servers and the JMeter version. We also checked the box next to the “Save Response Output and Calculate Percentiles” to access more metrics and download reports (pro feature only). Additionally you can attach any other needed files:
Next we will configure our Advanced Cloud Options. Here you control your load agents. You can select the type/size/number/location of the servers, edit security groups, and more. In this example we will use one m3.medium server in California and one m3.medium in Virginia:
If needed, you can also expand the “Advanced JMeter Options” to use various plugins, create JMeter reports, specify JMeter option strings, etc. For this example we will keep the default settings:
Run Your Test + Analyze Results
We will now name our test, and then hit “Start Test” to begin. Our servers will spin up and our test will begin shortly. Once our test has completed, we are redirected to the results page. Here we are presented with an overview and breakdown of everything that happened during the test. You will find:
- Response/request metrics
- Percentile results (Pro)
- Overview metrics (threads per second, average thread elapsed time, etc.)
- Error metrics (error response time, errors per second, etc.)
- Load agent metrics (load agent CPU usage, bytes received/transmitted, etc.)
- Server output files (.tgz)
- Cross-server generated JMeter report
- Merged JTL
- + more
All results are displayed on interactive graphs (can export data as .csv). In this test, we generated a total of 600 users across two servers. Some 18,600 requests were made, of which 99% completed within 7.86 seconds. As you can see our test costed us only $0.18 cents in total, making RedLine13 a great way to affordably scale out your JMeter tests.
