Setting up Distributed JMeter Environment on AWS (Windows Instance)

Load/ Capacity Testing

Load testing is a non-functional testing performed to determine how a system performs in the terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It also can serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.

Why JMeter?

• It is an open source tool.
• Can load test multiple types of servers
  • Web – HTTP, HTTPS
  • SOAP
  • Database via JDBC
  • LDAP
  • JMS
  • Mail – POP3(S) and IMAP (S)
• User friendly GUI
• Multithreading framework
• Caching and Cookies can be enabled and it impact as such as it is executing in the web browser.
• Controllers are configurable and can monitor the server performance
• Test Results can be captured in various formats

Why Remote/ Distributed Testing?

• In the event that your JMeter client machine is unable, performance-wise, to simulate enough users to stress your server or is limited at network level, an option exists to control multiple, remote JMeter engines from a single JMeter client
• By running JMeter remotely, you can replicate a test across many low-end computers and thus simulate a larger load on the server
• One instance of the JMeter client can control any number of remote JMeter instances, and collect all the data from them. This offers the following features:
  • Saving of test samples to the local machine
  • Management of multiple JMeterEngines from a single machine
  • No need to copy the test plan to each server – the client sends it to all the servers

Prerequisites:

• AWS account and basic knowledge
• Basic JMeter Knowledge.
• Firewalls on both the Instances should be turned off.
• Java should be installed on the machines and class path should be set.
• The Instances used should be in the same subnet (Public).
• The Inbound and Outbound rules of Security group under which the Instance is launched should be open
• Same Version of JMeter on all the Instances

Starting Instances

• Launch Instances on AWS in the same public subnet.
• Once you launch the Instance do a RDP.

Installing JMeter

• Download and Install JMeter on both the Instances from http://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi
• Note: The version of JMeter installed on all the Instances should be same.

Master Slave Configuration

Master Instance

• The Master Instance will be the Instance on which JMeter GUI will be running and controlling the tests
• For the Masters Instance following changes have to be made in the Jmeter.properties file
• Jmeter.properties file is placed under JMeter bin folder.
• Go to Remote Hosts and RMI configuration section
  • In the remote_hosts field mention the private IP addresses of the slave Instances.
  • e.g.: remote_hosts=10.1.1.14, 10.1.1.5, etc.
• For master Instance update the server.rmi.create field to false, also uncomment the field by removing "#"
  • server.rmi.create=false
• Uncomment the "mode=Asynch" field.
• Uncomment "asynch.batch.queue.size=" and update the value to 250
  • e.g.: asynch.batch.queue.size=250
• (This setting denotes that, if your machine IP is used as SLAVE; it will serve 250 users max to run on.)
  NOTE: Say you want to run a test on 5 remote slaves with 1000 of users; your Number of Threads (users) in Thread Group will be 200. (200*5 = 1000 users)

Slave Instances

• The Slave Instance will be the Instance on which will be used my Master Instance to run the tests.
• For the Slave Instance following changes have to be made in the Jmeter.properties file
• Jmeter.properties file is placed under JMeter bin folder.
• Go to Remote Hosts and RMI configuration section
  • In the remote_hosts field mention the private IP address of the Master Instances.
  • e.g.: remote_hosts=10.1.1.14, 10.1.1.5, etc.
• For slave Instance update the server.rmi.create field to false, also uncomment the field by removing "#"
  • server.rmi.create=true
• Uncomment the "mode=Asynch" field.
• Uncomment "asynch.batch.queue.size=" and update the value to 250
  • e.g.: asynch.batch.queue.size=250
• (This setting denotes that, if your machine IP is used as SLAVE; it will serve 250 users max to run on.)
  NOTE: Say you want to run a test on 5 remote slaves with 1000 of users; your Number of Threads (users) in Thread Group will be 200. (200*5 = 1000 users)

Running the Tests

• When all the configurations are made in the Master and Slave Instances run the "JMeter-server" Windows batch File from all the slave instances.
• This file is located in the bin directory of JMeter


jmeter-server file location


• Once it is done in all the slave Instances, start the JMeter GUI of the Master Instance.
• Develop a sample script.
• In the Master Instance go to "Run" and click on remote start. All the private IP's of the configured slave Instances will be displayed.
• User can also start all the slave Instances at once by clicking on "Remote Start All".



Remote start the instances