Private Preview: Running Apache JMeter load tests in the cloud

Prachi Bora (MSFT)

November 19th, 20150 0

There’s been a tremendous amount of excitement for the tools in Visual Studio Team Services and TFS for Java developers! Of course, we also wanted to ensure that the load testing needs of our customers are also met easily. Several of you may already be using Apache JMeter to run load tests for your applications. If so, you already know that setting up and maintaining rigs for generating a large amount of load that mimics the peak traffic you expect for your application, is a painful process. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could simply take the tests you have authored using Apache JMeter and submit them to a cloud service that could automatically spin up the machines, install the necessary software, execute your load tests and show you the results in just a few minutes?

If you watched Brian’s keynote at the Connect(); 2015 event yesterday or have been following the buzz, you may already be aware that with Cloud-based Load Testing you can now run Apache JMeter based tests using the Azure cloud. You can generate load from 10 different locations around the globe and scale the generated load easily to simulate realistic loads for your application. You get to see live results in the browser, as the test is running. When the load test is finished, you can view the summary report along with charts that indicate the performance of your app. You can download results for any offline analysis you may want to do using the JMeter IDE.

Private Preview

We are in the process of on-boarding customers for a private preview of this capability. If you are interested in running your Apache JMeter tests in the cloud and want to join our private preview, please reach out to us at vsoloadtest@microsoft.com. Please include your Team Services account information in the email. At present, we are looking for customers that can use the service on a regular basis and provide us feedback. This is essential for us to better understand the type of tests that our customers want to run and make improvements in a timely fashion.

What else can I do with Cloud Load Testing?

Apart from running JMeter tests using Cloud Load Testing, you can:

A simple load test – just provide your app URL and run a test. No tools necessary !
Visual Studio based load tests – build a load test using Visual Studio Enterprise and run them on-cloud or on-premises.

If you are new to Cloud-based Load Testing, the following links can help you get started:

Getting started guide

Additional resources

Introduction to Cloud Load Testing (video)