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Load testing Moodle with JMeter: Difference between revisions

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Being the original load testing tool for servers, introduced in 1998(!), JMeter [http://jmeter.apache.org/] has always been the number one load testing resp. performance measuring tool for Moodle. Around its release 2.5, Moodle developers made the testing process vastly simpler by adding many scripts. The topic of this page is the usage of the two scripts ''Make test course'' [https://docs.moodle.org/en/Test_course_generator] and ''Make JMeter test plan'' [https://docs.moodle.org/en/JMeter_test_plan_generator] and JMeter running on a client machine.


This article is a stub until we collect enough information about the developments since [https://docs.moodle.org/dev/index.php?title=JMeter&oldid=35771 previous update in 2012]. All improvements are welcome!
Warning:  Do not run these scripts nor JMeter targeting a production system! They generate a large amounts of artificial data and load the server to its limit and beyond, making it to bloat and/or become non-responsive. Don't even run them on a separate Moodle instance in the production server: their effect on the DBMS is undocumented.


You can also add your comments to the [https://docs.moodle.org/dev/index.php?title=Talk:JMeter&action=edit&redlink=1 discussion page] or to the the [https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=395002 discussion in the General developer forum].
<h2>Prerequisite</h2>
<h3>JMeter installed on your client computer</h3>
JMeter is a Java application so it can run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It can be run on the command line or on its graphical client on your desktop. First check if Java is installed in your client computer by opening a console and entering 'java -version'. If it doesn't return a version, first install [https://www.java.com/ Java] on your client. The instructions vary with the operating system.


<hr/ >
To install JMeter go to the [http://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi JMeter page], download the zip and unzip it to the directory of your choice.
The [http://jmeter.apache.org/ Apache JMeter] has always been the most common load testing resp. performance measuring tool in the Moodle community. Since around release 2.5, Moodle makes the process of load testing with JMeter vastly simpler through two built-in scripts, (Site administration > Development >) ""Make test course'''  and (dito >) '''Make JMeter test plan''', augmented by a set of add-ons [https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-performance-comparison Moodle performance comparison]. This document is about the two built-in scripts and JMeter.


Warning:  '''Do not run these scripts on a production system!'''
<h2>A test plan</h3>
You can make a test plan from the JMeter client in DIY style. We do not describe that path here, assuming you know JMeter. This page describes how to make a test plan with the scripts built in to Moodle and run it.


These scripts generate data and load the server to its limit and beyond, making it to bloat and become nonreponsive. Don't even run them on a separate Moodle instance in the production server: their effect on the DBMS is undocumented.
<h3>Make test course</h3>
See https://docs.moodle.org/en/Test_course_generator


<h2>Make test course</h2>
<h3>Make JMeter test plan</h3>
This tool creates standard test courses that include many sections, activities, and files. This is intended to provide a standardised measure for checking the reliability and performance of various system components (such as backup and restore). This test is important because there have been many cases previously where, faced with real-life use cases (e.g. a course with 1,000 activities), the system does not work. Courses created using this feature can occupy a large amount of database and filesystem space (tens of gigabytes). You will need to delete the courses (and wait for various cleanup runs) to release this space again.
See https://docs.moodle.org/en/JMeter_test_plan_generator


Do not use this feature on a live system. Use only on a developer server. (To avoid accidental use, this feature is disabled unless you have also selected DEVELOPER debugging level.)
<h2>Running the test plan on JMeter</h2>
 
To run JMeter open the /bin subdirectory and use either jmeter.bat on Windows or ./jmeter on Linux. This will open the JMeter GUI.
Once you have set the debugging level Site administration > Development > Debugging: Debug messages = DEVELOPER: extra Moodle debug messages for developers, visit Site administration > Development > Make test course. You have the choice between XS (~10 KB; create in ~1 second), S (~10 KB, create in ~30 secends), M (~100 KB, create in ~2 minutes), L (~1 GB, create in ~30 minutes), XL (~10 GB, create in ~2 hours) and XXL (~20 GB, created in ~4 hours).
 
Output:
Creating course
    Creating course [short name]
    Creating assignments (1): done (0.1s)
    Creating pages (1): done (0s)
    Creating small files (1): done (0s)
    Creating big files (1): done (0s)
    Checking user accounts (1)
    Creating user accounts (1 - 1): done (0s)
    Enrolling users into course (1): done (0s)
    Creating forum (2 posts): done (0s)
    Course completed (0.3s)
 
<h2>Make JMeter test plan</h2>
This tool creates a JMeter test plan file along with the user credentials file. This test plan is designed to work along with https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-performance-comparison, which makes easier to run the test plan in a specific Moodle environment, gathers information about the runs and compares the results, so you will need to download it and use it's test_runner.sh script or follow the installation and usage instructions.
 
You need to set a password for the course users in config.php (e.g. $CFG->tool_generator_users_password = 'moodle';). There is no default value for this password to prevent unintended usages of the tool. You need to use the update passwords option in case your course users have other passwords or they were generated by tool_generator but without setting a $CFG->tool_generator_users_password value.
 
It is part of tool_generator so it works well with the courses generated by the courses and the site generators, it can also be used with any course that contains, at least:


    Enough enrolled users (depends on the test plan size you select) with the password reset to 'moodle'
First step is to go to File -> Open and select the testplan.jmx file you downloaded above. This will open a tree on the left hand side of JMeter. Open the Warm-up site -> Default site request and enter the protocol (http or https) and Server name or IP. Then go to CSV Users Data and locate your users.csv file under Filename. <b>Repeat </b> this for Moodle Test.
    A page module instance
    A forum module instance with at least one discussion and one reply


You might want to consider your servers capacity when running large test plans as the amount to load generated by JMeter can be specially big. The ramp up period has been adjusted according to the number of threads (users) to reduce this kind of issues but the load is still huge.
Right mouse click on the Test Plan, then Add -> Listener. Choose Aggregate Report so you can follow the run as it happens. Save the changes in your test plan and run it.
 
Do not run the test plan on a live system. This feature only creates the files to feed JMeter so is not dangerous by itself, but you should NEVER run this test plan in a production site.
 
Visit  Site administration > Development > Make JMeter test plan. Under Size of course your have six possibilities: XS (1 user, 5 loops and 1 rampup period), S (30 users, 5 loops and 6 rampup period), M (100 users, 5 loops and 40 rampup period), L (1000 users, 6 loops and 100 rampup period), XL (5000 users, 6 loops and 500 rampup period) and XXL (1000 users, 7 loops and 800 rampup period). As target course select one of the courses created above.
Update course users password: ticked.
 
Now set $CFG->tool_generator_users_password in config.php to generate the test plan. Once successful you can download a test plan (jmx file) [[File:users_timestamp.csv|users_timestamp.csv]] and a users file (csv)
<h2>Running the test plan on JMeter</h2>
(to be filled)


==See also==
==References==
*[http://jmeter.apache.org/jmeter/ Apache JMeter homepage]
* [1] [http://jmeter.apache.org/ Apache JMeter homepage]
*[https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=377231 Jmeter or loading script/app to simulate concurrent users takng quizzes] (October 2018)
* [2] [https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance_recommendations#Obtain_a_baseline_benchmark Moodle Docs: Performance -> Obtain_a_baseline_benchmark]
*[https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=368620 Has anyone successfully run a jmeter test with 1000 users?] (April 2018)
* [3] [https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=377231 Jmeter or loading script/app to simulate concurrent users taking quizzes] (October 2018)
* [4]  [https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=368620 Has anyone successfully run a jmeter test with 1000 users?] (April 2018)


[[Category:Developer tools]]
[[Category:Developer tools]]

Latest revision as of 17:55, 7 January 2022

Being the original load testing tool for servers, introduced in 1998(!), JMeter [1] has always been the number one load testing resp. performance measuring tool for Moodle. Around its release 2.5, Moodle developers made the testing process vastly simpler by adding many scripts. The topic of this page is the usage of the two scripts Make test course [2] and Make JMeter test plan [3] and JMeter running on a client machine.

Warning: Do not run these scripts nor JMeter targeting a production system! They generate a large amounts of artificial data and load the server to its limit and beyond, making it to bloat and/or become non-responsive. Don't even run them on a separate Moodle instance in the production server: their effect on the DBMS is undocumented.

Prerequisite

JMeter installed on your client computer

JMeter is a Java application so it can run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It can be run on the command line or on its graphical client on your desktop. First check if Java is installed in your client computer by opening a console and entering 'java -version'. If it doesn't return a version, first install Java on your client. The instructions vary with the operating system.

To install JMeter go to the JMeter page, download the zip and unzip it to the directory of your choice.

A test plan

You can make a test plan from the JMeter client in DIY style. We do not describe that path here, assuming you know JMeter. This page describes how to make a test plan with the scripts built in to Moodle and run it.

Make test course

See https://docs.moodle.org/en/Test_course_generator

Make JMeter test plan

See https://docs.moodle.org/en/JMeter_test_plan_generator

Running the test plan on JMeter

To run JMeter open the /bin subdirectory and use either jmeter.bat on Windows or ./jmeter on Linux. This will open the JMeter GUI.

First step is to go to File -> Open and select the testplan.jmx file you downloaded above. This will open a tree on the left hand side of JMeter. Open the Warm-up site -> Default site request and enter the protocol (http or https) and Server name or IP. Then go to CSV Users Data and locate your users.csv file under Filename. Repeat this for Moodle Test.

Right mouse click on the Test Plan, then Add -> Listener. Choose Aggregate Report so you can follow the run as it happens. Save the changes in your test plan and run it.

References

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