When you build an application, you want it to be fast. Users should perceive it as fast and performant, even when many users are using it. And your application should continue to work without errors when it is under load. It can be difficult to know how your application behaves when it is used by many concurrent users. Azure Load Testing can help by putting your application under load and analyzing how it performs.
In this post, we'll test the performance of an existing web application with Azure Load Testing.
If you want to follow along, you'll need the following:
We'll start by creating an Azure Load Testing resource from the Azure portal.
Before we can create a test, we need to create an Apache JMeter script. This is a scripts that tells Azure Load Testing what to test and how to do it. JMeter scripts have the .jmx extension and look like the code here:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jmeterTestPlan version="1.2" properties="5.0" jmeter="5.4.1">
<hashTree>
<TestPlan guiclass="TestPlanGui" testclass="TestPlan" testname="Test Plan" enabled="true">
<stringProp name="TestPlan.comments"></stringProp>
<boolProp name="TestPlan.functional_mode">false</boolProp>
<boolProp name="TestPlan.tearDown_on_shutdown">true</boolProp>
<boolProp name="TestPlan.serialize_threadgroups">false</boolProp>
<elementProp name="TestPlan.user_defined_variables" elementType="Arguments" guiclass="ArgumentsPanel" testclass="Arguments" testname="User Defined Variables" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="TestPlan.user_define_classpath"></stringProp>
</TestPlan>
<hashTree>
<kg.apc.jmeter.threads.UltimateThreadGroup guiclass="kg.apc.jmeter.threads.UltimateThreadGroupGui" testclass="kg.apc.jmeter.threads.UltimateThreadGroup" testname="jp@gc - Ultimate Thread Group" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="ultimatethreadgroupdata">
<collectionProp name="1400604752">
<stringProp name="1567">5</stringProp>
<stringProp name="0">0</stringProp>
<stringProp name="48873">30</stringProp>
<stringProp name="49710">60</stringProp>
<stringProp name="10">10</stringProp>
</collectionProp>
</collectionProp>
<elementProp name="ThreadGroup.main_controller" elementType="LoopController" guiclass="LoopControlPanel" testclass="LoopController" testname="Loop Controller" enabled="true">
<boolProp name="LoopController.continue_forever">false</boolProp>
<intProp name="LoopController.loops">-1</intProp>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="ThreadGroup.on_sample_error">continue</stringProp>
</kg.apc.jmeter.threads.UltimateThreadGroup>
<hashTree>
<HTTPSamplerProxy guiclass="HttpTestSampleGui" testclass="HTTPSamplerProxy" testname="homepage" enabled="true">
<elementProp name="HTTPsampler.Arguments" elementType="Arguments" guiclass="HTTPArgumentsPanel" testclass="Arguments" testname="User Defined Variables" enabled="true">
<collectionProp name="Arguments.arguments"/>
</elementProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.domain">your-endpoint-url</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.port"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.protocol">https</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.contentEncoding"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.path"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.method">GET</stringProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.follow_redirects">true</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.auto_redirects">false</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.use_keepalive">true</boolProp>
<boolProp name="HTTPSampler.DO_MULTIPART_POST">false</boolProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.embedded_url_re"></stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.implementation">HttpClient4</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.connect_timeout">60000</stringProp>
<stringProp name="HTTPSampler.response_timeout">60000</stringProp>
</HTTPSamplerProxy>
<hashTree/>
</hashTree>
</hashTree>
</hashTree>
</jmeterTestPlan>
This JMeter script simulates a load test of five virtual users simultaneously accessing a web endpoint. It takes less than two minutes to complete. All you need to do to make this script work for you is to replace the string your-endpoint-url with the endpoint of the web application that you want to test, like microsoft.github.io/AzureTipsAndTricks.
Now that we have an Apache JMeter script, we can create a test in the Azure Load Testing resource.
When the test is done, it will show the results in the overview. This includes the load, response time, error percentage and throughput. You can see more details for the Azure services that were monitored by clicking on Additional insights.
Azure Load Testing helps you to test the responsiveness and resilience of your application when it is under load. You can integrate it into your DevOps pipeline to identify performance regressions, and you can monitor and analyze the Azure services that are under load.
Create a trial account today and go and check it out!
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