Site Testing with Apache's Jakarta JMeter
Everyone test’s their web sites before going live (right??), even if it just means that you click on the site after pushing it to production, but how do you simulate the large user count your production environment may see? Apache’s Jakarta Project has a product called JMeter that fits this bill nicely, though getting it working can be intimidating. This post will walk you through setting up a basic web site test and where to configure the important bits with the latest JMeter release.
First, of course, you need to go download the latest JMeter binary release:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_jmeter.cgi
On OS X you will need the binary file that ends in .tgz, on Windows grab the binary that ends in .zip. You will also need a JRE setup on your system (to test if you do, drop to a command / terminal prompt, and enter ‘java -version’. If you get ‘bad command or file name’, go hit Sun’s site and download the appropriate JVM / JRE)