JMeter – How To Run Multiple Thread Groups in Multiple Test Environments

26 Comments / Articles, Best Practices, CI / CD / DevOps, JMeter / By vIns / April 19, 2015

Overview:

As part of performance testing, I had to come up with performance test scripts for various use cases / business workflows for our application. When I design my performance test scripts, I will ensure that I have reusable test scripts as mentioned in this article.

JMeter – How To Create Reusable & Modular Test Scripts

If you have not read this article already, I would request you to read the article first and proceed with this article! As part of the above article, you can learn how to properly design your performance test scripts / test plan.

In a high level, I maintain a reusable ‘test script’ modules under ‘Test Fragment’. Then I use Module Controller to call specific modules to create the workflow.

jm-multiple-tg-001

I also create multiple ‘Thread Groups’ for each business functionality / workflow.

Once you have a test plan as mentioned above with multiple thread groups, then let’s see how we could maintain the JMeter test plan using Property files & running a specific thread group on a specific environment in this article!

Creating a Simple Test Plan:

Let’s consider an application with below business functionalities.

New User Registration
User Login & Order Creation
User Login & Product View
Existing Order Edit/Cancel
User Search

jm-multiple-tg-002

Lets also assume that we already came up with performance test plan with multiple thread groups as shown above. Each thread group will perform the specific functionality.

Sample Performance Test Requirement:

Now Lets assume we have performance requirements like,

Test each module independently (just run 1 thread group at a time).
Test combination of modules (more than 1 thread group / all).
Test in different environment (same test in different environment – In my project, I also run the same test in 2 different environments – QA & Staging).

Parameterizing Environment Details:

First, lets create different property files containing the test-environment details for each environment.

# QA.properties

test.environment.hostname=10.11.12.14
test.environment.port=8080
test.environment.protocol=http

# Staging.properties

test.environment.hostname=10.11.12.13
test.environment.port=443
test.environment.protocol=https

Now add a ‘Property File Reader‘ to read specific environment details at run time.

jm-multiple-tg-003

Then remove all the Server Name/IP, Port, Protocol details from the HTTP Requests/Samplers in your test plan.
Let the HTTP samplers have only the Path, Parameters, other request specific information.
Add a HTTP Request Defaults under Test plan as given below.
(If the HTTP request is missing an information, JMeter will get that from HTTP Request Defaults. So, updating IP, port details in one place will get reflected for the entire test).

jm-multiple-tg-004

jm-multiple-tg-005

Note:

${__P(test.environment.hostname)} will retrieve the value of the ip address or hostname given in the property file.

Now your test plan is modified to run the script on any given test environment.

Parameterizing Thread Group Details:

We have multiple thread groups in our test plan.
We will be passing thread group user count, ramp-up period, thread group duration information via property files to the test. Lets create a property file as given below.

# Anonymous User - Product Search

group1.usercount=10
group1.rampup=10
group1.duration=600

# New User Registration

group2.usercount=10
group2.rampup=10
group2.duration=600

# User Login & Order Creation

group3.usercount=10
group3.rampup=10
group3.duration=600

# User Login & Existing Product View

group4.usercount=10
group4.rampup=10
group4.duration=600

# BackOffice Admin User Activities - Existing Order Edit/Cancel

group5.usercount=10
group5.rampup=10
group5.duration=600

All the thread groups should be modified to use the properties as given below.

jm-multiple-tg-006

To run 1 specific thread group, we can change the user count (number of users) property for the Thread Group. for ex, If we need to run only ‘New User Registration’ module, user count property can be set to 0 for all other modules.

Note:

If the Thread Group user count is 0, JMeter can not execute the Thread Group. By updating thread group user count property to 0, a thread group can be disabled.

Lets create a multiple property files with different combinations as you might be interested. For ex, anonymoususers-only.properties will have below properties.

# Anonymous User - Product Search - Only

# Anonymous User - Product Search

group1.usercount=100
group1.rampup=100
group1.duration=3600

# New User Registration

group2.usercount=0
group2.rampup=0
group2.duration=0

# User Login & Order Creation

group3.usercount=0
group3.rampup=0
group3.duration=0

# User Login & Existing Product View

group4.usercount=0
group4.rampup=0
group4.duration=0

# BackOffice Admin User Activities - Existing Order Edit/Cancel

group5.usercount=0
group5.rampup=0
group5.duration=0

So, I create multiple property files to control specific thread group execution.

registration-only.properties
ordercreation-only.properties
all-modules.properties..etc

Add one more ‘Property File Reader’ to read specific module you are interested in executing.

jm-multiple-tg-007

Controlling Thread Group & Environment via Command Line:

At this point, We have created a JMeter test plan as explained above with 2 Property File Readers.
Now, lets parameterize the environment and module using properties which I will pass via command line at run time.

jm-multiple-tg-008

Rest is simple!!!

To run all modules on Staging environment

jmeter -n -t test.jmx -l result.jtl -Jenvionment=staging -Jmodule=all-module

To run all modules on QA environment,

jmeter -n -t test.jmx -l result.jtl -Jenvionment=QA -Jmodule=all-module

To run order creation module on Staging,

jmeter -n -t test.jmx -l result.jtl -Jenvionment=staging -Jmodule=ordercreation-only

To run registration module on QA,

jmeter -n -t test.jmx -l result.jtl -Jenvionment=QA -Jmodule=registration-only

Triggering Thread Groups via Jenkins:

If we use Jenkins to run our test, these test environment & module can be drop down list containing the possible values & passed as parameters from Jenkins to JMeter.

Thus, We can run specific thread group on specific environment without modifying the JMeter test as given below.

More details on JMeter-Jenkins integration can be found here.

Summary:

By properly designing the JMeter test plan with reusable test scripts, multiple thread groups and Property File Reader etc, we are able to control specific thread group execution at run time.

So we can focus on performance related issues for a specific module instead of running the whole test plan every time.

Happy Testing & Subscribe 🙂

26 thoughts on “JMeter – How To Run Multiple Thread Groups in Multiple Test Environments”

Vinodh says:

June 12, 2015 at 2:04 PM

Under “To Read properties” para: I do not understand how you have written ${__P(host)} function. Do we need to configure the list of hosts like PPE1 and PPE2 in a separate properties file and call them here in the script.

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  June 12, 2015 at 3:12 PM
  
  I pass the ‘host’ property via command line. -Jhost=ppe1 -> ${__P(host)} will return ppe1
  
  Reply
Vinodh says:

June 15, 2015 at 5:26 PM

Buddy, I have done the setup whatever mentioned in the above blog, while running in the command line
I use Linux system.

[jmeter@lab projects]$ jmeter -n -t tests.jmx -l testresults.jtl -R 10.1.1.100 -JHost=qa

This is how I am passing command line. But when I hit enter
it is showing JMeter command not found. Please help..

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  June 15, 2015 at 5:39 PM
  
  Do you have java installed?
  
  Follow the steps mentioned in this site.
  http://www.hotwaxsystems.com/quality-assurance/setup-apache-jmeter-in-linux-environment/
  
  In linux, you might have to run below command
  
  ./jmeter -n -t tests.jmx -l testresults.jtl -R 10.1.1.100 -JHost=qa
  
  Reply
  1. Vinodh says:
    
    June 15, 2015 at 6:00 PM
    
    Yes I do have the java installed on Linux machine.
    
    Thanks for command line sample and
    
    I tried with my project command line. It isnt working. It says” Could not open test.jmx file..
    
    Reply
    1. vIns says:
      
      June 15, 2015 at 7:29 PM
      
      It is a different error. So JMeter seems to be working.
      For this, you can provide the absolute path to the jmx.
      
      ex:
      
      ./jmeter -n -t /path/to/test.jmx
      
      Reply
      1. Vinodh says:
        
        June 16, 2015 at 5:06 PM
        
        Fixed.. It is working fine.. Thanks for the detailed explanation in this blog..
      2. Vinodh says:
        
        June 16, 2015 at 7:35 PM
        
        Just have a small query: How does the all-modules.properties file look like: Please provide me an example
      3. vIns says:
        
        June 18, 2015 at 2:41 PM
        
        The property file is same. Only the values will be present. If you need to run the all the thread groups – you need to have the thread count > 0.
        If you need to disable a thread group, thread count should be 0.
Vinodh says:

June 18, 2015 at 3:29 PM

I tried running the same test remotely with 3 slave machines (Distributed testing) with the above steps mentioned in this blog. I get the below error:
“Error in rconfigure()method java.rmi.serverexception: RemoteException Occured in server thread; nested exception is:
java.rmi.UnmarshalException:error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:com.tag.jmeter.ext.config.propertyReader (no security manager: RMI class loader disabled)”

Am I missing something anything in my test. (or) do I need to configure something to override this?
Please advice..

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  June 19, 2015 at 1:03 AM
  
  Please ensure that you place the Property File Reader jar in all the slave machines.
  
  Reply
Testing Sorttricks says:

July 4, 2015 at 7:19 AM

Well, I think your blog is pretty good and have lots of useful information about What is the thread group in Jmeter . Keep it up!

Reply
Trem says:

November 19, 2016 at 11:01 AM

Could you please share your jmx and .properties file?
I am new on jmeter and some of the step i don’t really understand.
Would like to learn it from your jmx file

many thx

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  November 19, 2016 at 2:04 PM
  
  I did this long back. So I do not have it now. But, using the given screenshot, you can create a simple script.
  
  Reply
Trem says:

November 19, 2016 at 11:06 AM

and what is the value for loop = “forever” in properties file?

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  November 19, 2016 at 1:53 PM
  
  -1 is forever.
  
  Reply
Trem says:

November 20, 2016 at 1:48 AM

from screenshoot, properties path is hardcoded to c:\xxx
can we use relative path?

my_dir
|——-my_properties

my_dir contains my .jmx file and my_properties contains my .properties file,
what should i add in the properties file reader?
${__P(host)}.properties

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  November 20, 2016 at 3:41 PM
  
  Yes, you can use relative path (path from .jmx file)
  
  Reply
Vladimir Belorusets says:

January 6, 2017 at 6:31 AM

Great article, Vinoth as always!

Reply
Fasa says:

February 1, 2017 at 4:00 AM

basically the issue is that the value -Jhost=hostname is not passed onto your plugin by ${__P(host))}.. do you have an idea why? I am using JMeter 3.1 r1770033

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  February 9, 2017 at 7:37 PM
  
  Fasa,
  I see that your usage is wrong. ${(__P(host)} – change this to ${__P(host)}
  
  Reply
Vrishjana says:

December 30, 2017 at 3:42 PM

My test data varies depending on environment.
If it is qa, then we hv to use test data1( path of csv file )
If it is system test then we hv to use test data 2(path of csv)
How to handle this scenario

Reply
1. vIns says:
  
  January 1, 2018 at 2:45 AM
  
  That is what the article explains. You keep any such info in the properties file. for ex: you have 2 different files like qa.csv, prod.csv etc. then you have a property called testdata.filename=qa.csv for qa.properties, testdata.filename=prod.csv for prod.proeprties. by using ${testdata.filename} you use the appropriate file.
  
  Reply
Krishna says:

October 18, 2018 at 4:29 AM

Great Article

Reply
SaneQ says:

November 7, 2018 at 12:39 PM

I spend a lot of time to start using -J on remote machines, but if u work with jmeter slaves u must use -G param, not -J

Reply
Musaffir says:

March 1, 2019 at 2:38 AM

Hi Vln,

Thanks for this blog post. Nice read
I thought about this approach for my work, where i have a single test plan jmx file, which contains various thread groups… and am planning to use this single test plan for my various types of performance testing, say smoke testing,capacity testing,soak testing etc. .. so for all these testing the user load, rampup, duration etc varies as we know . and also as I have around 5 thread groups which concentrate on 5 application flow/scenarios. and with each scenario I might be interested to do one type of perf testing say capacity testing for different loads. and also combination of these scenarios with thread output controller to mimic real time behavior.

so if i maintain different properties file for each of these combinations of requirement, and can pass the respective one based on the type of test/scenario/userload-rampup requirement choosen by tester.

but the problem i see here is I would need to maintain so many properties file here. though i wont be updating it more often
do you think its a good practice ? is there any better alternate here ?
I tried not to keep the property file , but pass the parameter to jmeter during time time from jenkins… but it was giving me java memory error, due to passing many arguments i believe

using Jmeter + Maven plugin is what i thought of trying now.. where i can pass run parameters as many i want i guess..so parameters chosen by tester from jenkins ui will be passed to maven

please let me know if you have some idea in this situation

Warm Regards, Musaffir

Reply