Relation between throughput and threads in Jmeter

Question

I am novice to Jmeter, and I have certain queries which I am not able to get from the Jmeter home site.

1. What does throughput value exactly mean - does it mean it is no of requests per second for each thread or it is no of requests cumulatively across threads ?
2. I want to run a test for 5 minutes evenly spread across 125k requests, how do I specify throughput and delay values assuming no of threads is 60?
3. The values starttime , endtime, duration, delay, rampup period, etc given in Jmeter file are of seconds/milliseconds ? How can I configure them ?
4. How can I find the transactions per second value during or after the test ?

Answer 1

1. As per JMeter Glossary

Throughput is calculated as requests/unit of time. The time is calculated from the start of the first sample to the end of the last sample. This includes any intervals between samples, as it is supposed to represent the load on the server. The formula is: Throughput = (number of requests) / (total time).

2. You can set test execution time either using "Scheduler" section of Thread Group where you can set Duration (seconds) for the test. By default JMeter executes samplers as fast as it can however you can use Timers to simulate user think time or add pauses between requests for any other reason. Desired execution rate in "requests per minute" can be set via Constant Throughput Timer

3. The values are in seconds. Configure them according to your load scenario. As per thread group documentation:

Ramp-up needs to be long enough to avoid too large a work-load at the start of a test, and short enough that the last threads start running before the first ones finish (unless one wants that to happen). Start with Ramp-up = number of threads and adjust up or down as needed.

4. The easiest option is using Transactions per Second listener available through JMeter Plugins