Performance Testing Checklist

This following list suggests a comprehensive and effective approach to optimizing the performance of your applications.

• Defining the test scope
  • Know your scenario and put it into words/flowchart
  • Define your goals
  • Get the amount of your daily users
  • Understand your application spike hours
  • Know your KPIs
• Building your script
  • Choose the right Thread group for your scenario
  • Use Default HTTP request to control your HTTPs requests Server/IP, protocol, implementation, and so on
  • Verify you added a cookie manager
  • Check you fetch every dynamic values (for example, form_build_id) and use a RegEx and a variable for it
  • User Define Variables VS User parameters preprocess - know which to use and when
  • Use assertion when you can't count on the HTTP response code (for example, login)
  • Use the header manager to control your requests headers (user-agent) and change the values if needed
• Preparation toward your load test
  • Debug your script, make sure all files and plugins are there.
  • Verify you have your APM installed and configured.
  • Use the latest JMeter stable version
  • Optimize your script
    • Use JSR233 + Groovy + compilation key instead of BSF
    • Disable your script listeners
    • Run in non-GUI mode
    • Optimize your Java configuration to meet your needs
    • Use CSV as your output format
    • Prefer using Regular extractor instead of XPath
  • Use the ramp-up wisely
  • Check your distributed configuration and verify it works
• What to notice in your load report
  • The right way to scale up (look here)
  • Identify your bottlenecks and errors