JMeter - Performance Testing

Question

I'm using JMeter for performance testing. I tried to use Blazemeter. I need to know main features of Blazemeter.

Why Blazemeter is better than JMeter? Can anyone explain the reason and the major differences between JMeter and Blazemeter?

Answer 1

There is no much difference cause BlazeMeter uses Apache JMeter. BlazeMeter provides some extra services on top of JMeter, for instance:

• if your machine is not powerful enough to conduct the load you will have to go for distributed testing. In case of BlazeMeter you don't have to worry about getting extra machines, installing JMeter on them, configuring clustering, etc.
• BlazeMeter enhances JMeter reporting by providing results in a fancy web interface with some extra features like comparing different test executions, exporting results as PDF, automatically detecting and highlighting test phases, etc. Check example BlazeMeter Sense reports if interested
• Alternative recording service with automatic correlation of dynamic parameters feature
• You can quickly define desired load pattern and change the load on the fly without having to do calculations, playing with ramp-up and ramp-down periods

Theoretically if you have enough time you can do almost everything provided by BlazeMeter cloud service on your own, on the other hand if you have some extra money in your pocket you can use BlazeMeter to speed load testing process up and put your efforts somewhere else so it is up to you to decide which is better for you given your current or future project(s).

Answer 2

I have been using JMeter and Blazemeter for my script creation. There is not much difference between them for scripting phase. Blazemeter uses the jMeter services to record the script just it provides a better visual interface.

For a web application on my PC i will prefer to record it using JMeter but blazemeter is helpful when you are recording a mobile application say iOS or Android. You can avoid the hassle of creating a temporary root certificate and also your device and system need not be wired connected. If you proceed using blazemeter you just need create a blazemeter proxy and configure your device to the same proxy settings. This link can help you get on with it:- Recording mobile app using blazemeter. The main advantage that blazemeter has on Jmeter is for for script execution and bottleneck identification.

1. You need not worry about the latency resulting in due to poor netwrok connectivity as you will be executing your tests on the cloud servers.

2. You need not maintain an infrastructure to generate load when performing a distributed testing. But there will be cost involved in-case you are planning to run a test with more than 50 users.

3. You will be provided an option to simulate your load with different network speeds, say wifi, 4g, 3g etc and with different geographical locations.

4. Blazemeter will provide you with rich perfromance test reports with better visual representations

5. All the major APM's- New Relic, Dynatrace and APPdynamaics has an extension for Blazemeter which you can very conveniently use for bottleneck identification.