Getting Your Performance Testing Started with BlazeMeter

BlazeMeter is a performance, load and functional testing tool for websites, apps and APIs that leverages open source testing tools by making them easy to run and scalable. With BlazeMeter, you can easily upload a testing script (from JMeter, Gatling, Selenium or any of the ~20 tools we support), ramp up the number of virtual users, set the load to run from different parts of the world and run your test. You will get advanced real-time reporting as well as have access to reports months back.

BlazeMeter also enables you to collaborate on your tests and reports with colleagues, manage test permissions and get summaries for non-technical audiences. Finally, you can integrate BlazeMeter with different APM and CI tools, making your performance testing part of your Continuous Integration process.

These upcoming blog posts will show you how to run your performance tests with BlazeMeter. The GUI is easy to use and informative on its own, so I have no doubt you will also manage this yourself. Sign up to BlazeMeter from here. To check out how BlazeMeter works, just put your URL here and your test will start in minutes.

Getting Started with BlazeMeter

Sign up to a free webinar on how to use BlazeMeter at this link.

Sign up and get a BlazeMeter account. It’s free.

Your brand new workspace will open up. Click on the blue “Create Test” button at the top of the screen in the middle of the menu.

The following screen will open up:

Click on the red/maroon colored button that says “JMeter Test (new)”.

Now, this screen will open up. This is the screen where we will configure our test.

Scenario Definition

This is the section where you choose the tool that will run the tests, as well as add all the files you need for the test.

Click on the “+” icon, and upload your test script.

Here are some resources to help you create your first script. You can use any of the ~20 tools we support.

• Getting Started with JMeter
• JMeter Academy
• BlazeMeter blog
• Gatling official website
• Learning Taurus

When you’ve completed uploading your files, you will see the full Scenario Definition module. You can always easily add or remove files.

This is also the place to add your CSV files to the script, if you need them for your test.

BlazeMeter will automatically detect the test type according to your script, but you can also set it manually.

Read more about the scenario definition from here.

Load Configuration

This is the section where you determine how many users the test is run for and how they are added.

Set up the number of users you want to run your test for. In this example, we are running a test for 100,000 users. If you’re not sure how many users to run your test for, this guide can help you.

Set up the number of minutes you want your test to run for. In this case we put 180 minutes = 3 hours.

Set the ramp up time, i.e the number of seconds from the start of the test until it runs for all users. In this case, 600 seconds =10 minutes.

Set the number of steps in the ramp-up. This will determine if all users are added at once or in batches, and how many per batch.

Limit RPS – Set this to restrict the number of requests per second in your test.

Read more about the load configuration from here.

Load Distribution

This is the section where you set up where the test is run from around the world.

Choose how many locations you want to run the test from, and where each location is:

You can also choose if the weight is distributed equally between all users, or not.

Read more about the load distribution from here.

That’s it! This is basically enough for running your test. See how easy it was? In the next blog posts we will learn more advanced configurations, like failure criteria, network emulation, integrations and debugging, and also how to analyze reports.

In any case, when you’re done configuring your test, click on the “run test” button on the left and enjoy results in just a few minutes. You will see insightful metrics in real-time and months back, including throughput, error rate, response time and percentiles. BlazeMeter’s reports are more advanced and easier to use than open source reports, and are simple to analyze and understand.

Interested in getting to know us? Sign up for a free BlazeMeter demo. Or run your first test yourself.