Neocortix Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will show you how run your own JMeter scripts on the Neocortix platform and use our Daily Regression Test tools.

This is an advanced tutorial. We assume that you have already successfully installed our

ncscli

software on your Linux machine and completed the Basic JMeter tutorial. We also recommend that you review the JMeter Advanced tutorial, follow the easy instructions to Prepare the Master for JMeter HTML Reporting, and familiarize yourself with the JPetStore example.

Preparing Your JMeter Script

We assume that you have an existing JMeter script

YourScript.jmx

that you are already using professionally, and running it on conventional On-Premises or Cloud instances, likely on a high-performance server with many cores and a lot of memory, with many Virtual Users. We will show you how to modify

YourScript.jmx

so that you can run it on many small Neocortix instances, rather than on one huge conventional server.

The key idea is to modify

YourScript.jmx

so that it has at most 20 Virtual Users active at any time, and then you will need more instances to achieve the desired load. For example, if your

YourScript.jmx

has 4000 Virtual Users active at its peak, you will modify it to have only 20 Virtual Users active, and use 200 Neocortix instances to achieve the desired load.

Please create

YourModifiedScript.jmx

so that it has at most 20 Virtual Users active at any time, and make a note of the number of instances you will need to achieve your desired Load.

Please note that the Output File Name for the View Results Tree method should be set to

jmeterOut/VRT.jtl

as shown here:

Please note also that the “Save as XML” checkbox should be unchecked in the JMeter Sample Result Save Configuration popup, so that the .jtl files will be in the right format, as shown here:

And then, finally, you will need to put

YourModifiedScript.jmx

into the

~/ncsexamples/batchMode/jmeterWorker

directory, so that it can be found by the

runBatchJPetStore.py

script. And you will also have to copy any other files into that directory that your script may need, like plugin .jar files, user.csv files, etc.

Running A Small Example of Your Script

In the subdirectory

~/ncsexamples/batchMode

you will find the runBatchJPetStore.py command. Please edit

runBatchJPetStore.py

and substitute

YourModifiedScript.jmx

for

JPetstore_JMeter5.4.1.jmx

, and set

startFrame = 1,
endFrame = 6,
nWorkers = 10,

You may also have to modify the timeout values. We use these values for a 500s test. Please increase them if your test is longer than 500s.

timeLimit = 80*60,
instTimeLimit = 12*60,
frameTimeLimit = 11*60,

Once you have made those modifications, please run

./runBatchJPetStoreAll.sh

Here are example outputs, in

./data/petstore_<date>/TestResults.html

Running a Larger Example of Your Script

Now that you have

YourModifiedScript.jmx

working on a small number of instances, please edit

runBatchJPetStore.py

to increase the number of instances to achieve the desired Load. For example, for 200 instances, try these parameters:

startFrame = 1,
endFrame = 200,
nWorkers = 360,

Now please re-run

./runBatchJPetStoreAll.sh

Here are example outputs, in

./data/petstore_<date>/TestResults.html

Daily Regression Tests and SLO Comparisons

Once you have a large version of your test running, you will likely have many data directories in

./data/

. Those are a record of your recent tests. You can use

./plotJMeterRegression.py

to analyze the sequence of tests, looking for changes from one run to the next.

Please run

python3 ./plotJMeterRegression.py

Here is an example output

./data/regressionTest.png

, showing Daily Regression Test and Service Level Objective (SLO) Comparisons for all of the tests in the

./data/

directory.

Congratulations! You have gotten your own JMeter Script running on the Neocortix platform and performed Daily Regression Tests and SLO Comparisons. You are ready to use this powerful Global Last-Mile Load Testing system professionally.