Load Testing and Performance Analytics with BlazeMeter, JMeter, and New Relic

This will be a joint presentation from Steve Hall and Devon Hillard.

JMeter is a 100% open-source load testing application written in Java by the fine folks at Apache that has been around for quite a few years. It is very easy to use and test scripts can be created quickly through the use of jMeter's Firefox recording functionality. At Spark::red, we've developed an easy, scalable way to generate large amounts of simulated user load across continents to better serve our clients' needs. Using JMeter and Cloudlayer computing instances from SoftLayer, we are able to create an unlimited number of JMeter load agents at any of SoftLayer's data centers across the world. A central jMeter console runs from a separate cloud instance and receives data back from the agents as the load is generated. Once the test has finished, reports and graphs showing throughput, response time, etc can be generated quickly.

Once you've generated load on your web application, the next step is to monitor the health and performance of your application, and the server(s) it runs on. NewRelic, in addition to providing real end user page load performance metrics and happiness data, also provides server monitoring and deep application monitoring and performance analytics. It makes it easy to see everything from your hardware utilization plotted against requests per minute, to real time reports on your slow SQL queries, to instant stack trace analysis of performance bottlenecks in your code. You can find your application's weak spots in minutes.

With good tools to help you stress test your application, monitor application performance, and identify performance bottlenecks, it's easy to find and fix issues and quickly see real improvements and hard metrics about your traffic capacity.

Bios:

Devon has been a prominent architect in ATG circles for thirteen years, and is also considered an expert regarding JBoss open source platform development. Since building one of the first well known Seam-based sites, 10minutemail.com, he has been repeatedly called upon to review manuscripts for Seam development books. Devon’s ATG history traces back to 1998, when he worked at ATG in Cambridge, MA, as a senior architect for both Professional Services and Sales Engineering. With more than thirteen years under his belt focusing on ATG technologies, including work done for AT&T Wireless, Cingular, People’s Choice Awards, Scotts, and Ulta Cosmetics, Devon has proven his expertise in creating and maintaining high-volume ATG based implementations.
Devon’s personal site and blog can be found here: http://www.digitalsanctuary.com/ .

Stephen has over thirteen years experience as a QA Engineer, Infrastructure Specialist and all-around troubleshooter with eCommerce, healthcare, financial, and security software companies. He has worked at ATG in Cambridge MA as an Automation Engineer and more recently at Spindrift BV, an ATG implementation consultancy based in the UK and The Netherlands. With Spindrift, Stephen oversaw the customer support system and development environment infrastructure for Site Builder, a page rendering framework built on top of ATG’s Business Control Center. In addition, he provided QA and deployment consulting services to numerous Spindrift clients including Tesco Plc, Bol.com, Shop Direct Group, Fruugo, Philips Nederland and Technische Unie.

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Schedule:

6:30-7:15 Eat pizza and meet other members
7:15-8:15 Presentation
8:15-9:00 Q&A, general socializing and more pizza eating