You can configure it but it has to be a valid Date
If you want to control duration of your test I would recommend the following:
- Test
Start Time
can be set by OS means (cron jobs, scheduled tasks, continuous integration system build plan, etc.)
- Test
Duration
can be set via JMeter Property.
For instance, you want your test to run for 2 hours. In order to achieve this you need to provide the value of "7200" into "Duration" section of thread group. If you put ${__property(duration,,)}
or ${__P(duration,)}
into "Duration" input of thread group and set this duration=7200
property in i.e. user.properties
or jmeter.properties
files (they both live under /bin folder of your JMeter installation) or provide it as a command-line argument as
jmeter -Jduration=7200 -n -t /path/to/your/test/plan.jmx -l /path/to/results/file.jtl
The test will run for 2 hours (plus some additional time to gracefully shut down all the test threads).
See Apache JMeter Properties Customization Guide for more details on JMeter Properties use cases.