JMeter Test Plan settings

Question

I am new to JMeter. I'm using JMeter version 5.0. I have created a new Test Plan. Test Plan has a few settings. Can you please explain the use of each checkbox?

Checkboxes are:

1) Run ThreadGroups consecutively(i.e one at a time)

2) Run tearDown ThreadGroups after shutdown of main threads.

3) Functional test mode(i.e. save Response data and Sampler Data)

Answer 1

Run ThreadGroups consecutively(i.e one at a time)

If your test plan contains two thread groups i.e ThreadGroup-1 and ThreadGroup-2.

If above property is unchecked -then the active threads from both the thread group will run parallel and

if checked - That means JMeter will start ThreadGroup-1 first, then ThreadGroup-2 and so on.

So by using this property you can instruct JMeter to run the Thread Groups serially.

Run tearDown ThreadGroups after shutdown of main threads

By default JMeter always run tear down thread group after completion of normal thread group. But if there is any failure in the above thread group and threads stopped due to some reason. Then this tear down thread group will not run. But if this property is checked then tear down thread group will always run.

Answer 2

1) Run ThreadGroups consecutively(i.e one at a time)

In a test plan usually, you would have different thread groups ( user groups ) sending requests to different services. For example

• Thread Group 1 > Load and Login to the System
• Thread Group 2 > A Form Submission in the System

Keeping the above-mentioned thread groups, if you have selected Run ThreadGroups consecutively option it will run The Thread group 1 first and then move to the second one. If not there will be a parallel execution of all active Thread groups.

2) Run tearDown ThreadGroups after shutdown of main threads

There is no difference in a normal Thread Group and a Teardown Thread Group when it comes to the functionality. You can specify the Post-Test actions in the Teardown Thread Group and use Run tearDown ThreadGroups after shutdown of main threads to execute them after the normal thread Group Execution

• As an example if you have created a user profile for your performance testing purposes and if you want to remove the user after the test execution. You can create the request to delete the user in this thread group

3) Functional test mode(i.e. save Response data and Sampler Data)

When you run a huge set of requests I recommend you to NOT to use this. The reason is if you have selected this option it will include all the request and response data (including HTML, etc. ) in your log files. ( Normally it won't record your response and sampler data ) Even if you run the test in NON-GUI mode the log file would be few GBs if you have selected this option. So it's better to use this if you are debugging or running a less number of users in your test.

Answer 3

When trying to understand JMeter, go through its component reference (below)

You should keep the defaults unless specific case is needed.

Functional Testing is not recommended/needed unless you are debugging (and also not needed usually)

teardown/setup groups are useful for setting/cleaning tasks in test.

And usually you want run multiple Thread Groups serially rather than in parallel.

Selecting Functional Testing instructs JMeter to save the additional sample information - Response Data and Sampler Data - to all result files. This increases the resources needed to run a test, and may adversely impact JMeter performance. If more data is required for a particular sampler only, then add a Listener to it, and configure the fields as required.

The option does not affect CSV result files, which cannot currently store such information. Also, an option exists here to instruct JMeter to run the Thread Group serially rather than in parallel.

Run tearDown Thread Groups after shutdown of main threads: if selected, the tearDown groups (if any) will be run after graceful shutdown of the main threads. The tearDown threads won't be run if the test is forcibly stopped.