...
[12:36:22 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> there's decent docs online for tomcat... i always have to look
[12:37:54 CST(-0600)] <dd> yeah, i think that's what i read. one more question, we're trying to test for a good amount of users (500-750) using the portal at a time, will a large rampup time affect this? give that the whole test sequence doesn't take that long?
[12:38:16 CST(-0600)] <dd> would i need to artificially slow it down somewhere while the thread is still in the portal?
[12:39:11 CST(-0600)] <dd> or is that what looping is for?
[12:39:36 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> http://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/component_reference.html#Constant_Throughput_Timer
[12:39:46 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> so what I usually do when testing is:
[12:40:00 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> determine desired throughput (requests / second usually)
[12:40:16 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> determine desired concurrent user base (number of threads)
[12:40:25 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> write the script for what each "user" does
[12:40:55 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> setup the thread count of X and ramp up time of X * 5
[12:41:17 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> have the test set to run with each thread looping "forever"
[12:41:26 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> that constant throughput timer is the key
[12:41:57 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> you set that do something like 60 samples/minute with the Calculate Throughput Based on "all active threads (shared)"
[12:42:22 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> then your portal will see no more than 1 request / second across all of the threads you have running
[12:42:38 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> it of course could be slower than that if the target system can't keep up
[12:42:46 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> but the CTT is your throttle
[12:43:06 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> and that "all active threads (shared)" setting is crucial
[12:43:14 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> otherwise it is per-thread throughput
[12:43:26 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> which is really impossible to get a decent repeatable test setup with
[12:43:33 CST(-0600)] <dd> ah, ok. i had that timer in there before but didn't have "all active threads"
[12:44:09 CST(-0600)] <dd> so you have it loop forever until you get errors or have enough data?
[12:44:34 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> yup
[12:44:47 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> generally we run tests where I'm watcfhing it
[12:45:08 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> if I wanted an automated test I'd set the scheduler bit in the thread group control to run for a fixed time
[12:45:13 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> so threads still loop forever
[12:45:21 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> but the whole test may only run for X minutes
[12:45:30 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> and 3-5 seconds per thread on ramp up is really needed
[12:46:54 CST(-0600)] <dd> ok, thank you EricDalquist and drewwills, great places to start, much appreciated