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15. Remote Testing

In the event that your JMeter client machine is unable, performance-wise, to simulate enough
users to stress your server, an option exists to control multiple, remote JMeter engines from a
single JMeter GUI client. By running JMeter remotely, you can replicate a test across many
low-end computers and thus simulate a larger load on the server. One instance of the JMeter
GUI client can control any number of remote JMeter instances, and collect all the data from
them. This offers the following features:

Saving of test samples to a local machine

Managment of multiple JMeterEngines from a single machine

Note that while you can indeed execute the JMeterEngine on your application server, you
need to be mindful of the fact that this will be adding processing overhead on the application
server and thus your testing results will be somewhat tainted. The recommended approach is
to have one or more machines on the same Ethernet segment as your application server that
you configure to run the JMeter Engine. This will minimize the impact of the network on the
test results without impacting the performance of the application serer itself.

Step 1: Start the servers

To run JMeter in remote node, start the JMeter server component on all machines you wish to
run on by running the JMETER_HOME/bin/jmeter-server (unix) or
JMETER_HOME/bin/jmeter-server.bat (windows) script.

Step 2: Add the server IP to your client's Properties File

Edit the properties file on the controlling JMeter machine . In /bin/jmeter.properties, find the
property named, "remote_hosts", and add the value of your running JMeter server's IP address.
Multiple such servers can be added, comma-delimited.

Note that you can also use the -J command line option to specify the remote host(s) to use.
E.g. jmeter -Jremote_hosts=host1,127.0.0.1,host2

Step 3: Start the JMeter Client

Now you are ready to start the controlling JMeter client. For MS-Windows, start the client
with the script "bin/jmeter.bat". For UNIX, use the script "bin/jmeter". You will notice that the
Run menu contains two new sub-menus: "Remote Start" and "Remote Stop" (see figure 1).
These menus contain the client that you set in the properties file. Use the remote start and stop
instead of the normal JMeter start and stop menu items.

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Figure 1 - Run Menu

15.1 Doing it Manually

In some cases, the jmeter-server script may not work for you (if you are using an
OS platform not anticipated by the JMeter developers). Here is how to start the
JMeter servers (step 1 above) with a more manual process:

Step 1a: Start the RMI Registry

JMeter uses Remote Method Invocation (RMI) as the remote communication

mechanism. Therefore, you need to run the RMI Registry application (which is
named, "rmiregistry") that comes with the JDK and is located in the "bin"
directory. Before running rmiregistry, make sure that the following jars are in
your system claspath:

JMETER_HOME/lib/ext/ApacheJMeter_core.jar
JMETER_HOME/lib/jorphan.jar
JMETER_HOME/lib/logkit-1.2.jar

The rmiregistry application needs access to certain JMeter classes. Run

rmiregistry with no parameters. By default the application listens to port 1099.

Step 1b: Start the JMeter Server

Once the RMI Registry application is running, start the JMeter Server. Use the
"-s" option with the jmeter startup script ("jmeter -s").

Steps 2 and 3 remain the same.

15.2 Tips

If you're running Suse Linux, these tips may help. The default installation may
enable the firewall. In that case, remote testing will not work properly. The
following tips were contributed by Sergey Ten.

If you see connections refused, turn on debugging by passing the following

options.

The solution to the problem is to remove the loopbacks 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.2
from etc/hosts. What happens is jmeter-server can't connect to rmiregistry if
127.0.0.2 loopback is not available. Use the following settings to fix the problem.

Replace

`dirname $0`/jmeter -s "$@"

With

HOST="-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=[computer_name][computer_domain]
-Djava.security.policy=`dirname $0`/[policy_file]"
`dirname $0`/jmeter $HOST -s "$@"

Also create a policy file and add [computer_name][computer_domain] line to

/etc/hosts.

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15.3 Using a different port

By default, JMeter uses the standard RMI port 1099. It is possible to change this.
For this to work successfully, all the following need to agree:

On the server, start rmiregistry using the new port number

On the server, start JMeter with the property server_port defined
On the client, update the remote_hosts property to include the new remote
host:port settings

Since Jmeter 2.1.1, the jmeter-server scripts provide support for changing the
port. For example, assume you want to use port 1664 (perhaps 1099 is already
used).

On Windows (in a DOS box)

C:\JMETER> SET SERVER_PORT=1664
C:\JMETER> JMETER-SERVER [other options]

On Unix:
$ SERVER_PORT=1664 jmeter-server [other options]
[N.B. use upper case for the environment variable]

In both cases, the script starts rmiregistry on the specified port, and then starts
JMeter in server mode, having defined the "server_port" property.

The chosen port will be logged in the server jmeter.log file (rmiregistry does not
create a log file).

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Copyright © 1999-2006, Apache Software Updated: $Date: 2006-03-29 00:09:11 +0100 (Wed, 29 Mar
Foundation 2006) $

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