simulating load with jmeter

Question

I am new to jmeter and need some help. My team is coming up with a new web site which provides pay per view video service. We are using jmeter to load test the application and here goes the requirement: the Current production load is 500 views per day or nearly 20 purchases per hour, the expected load may double in an year.

For above scenario, how should I configure jmeter threads, For example, should I place 20 threads with 1 second ramp up time and set iteration to 1 or 20 threads with ramp up time to 60 minutes with iteration count to 1. Are there any better approach to place the load as per the requirement. Please advice.

Answer 1

Ramp-up is the amount of time in which JMeter will launch all defined threads.

I.e. if you have 20 seconds ramp-up time and 40 threads it means that JMeter will start with 1 thread and add 2 threads each second for 20 seconds. If you have 20 seconds ramp-up time and 60 threads 3 threads will be added each second.

Remember to provide enough iterations as if thread doesn't have work (samplers) to do it will be shut down.

JMeter Plugins extension pack offers Ultimate Thread Group - an easy way of defining ramp-up, ramp-down and time to hold the load.

For your scenario I would recommend throttling the load by means of Constant Throughput Timer which allows to define desired load in "requests per minute".