Load Testing

To load test our site, we generated 1000 fake users and used JMeter to test the site. The file $PROJECT_ROOT/scripts/create_test_users.py contains Python functions for creating and removing two groups of 500 test users. The .jmx file in $PROJECT_ROOT/jmeter contains two runs. The first run uses the first group to do a few activities. The second run also does a few activities and is executed when the first run is over.

To run a load test:

1. (Optional, but recommended) Make sure other non-essential services are shut down.
2. Open a shell (python manage.py shell_plus) on the server you are going to test and copy/paste the functions in scripts/create_test_users.py into the shell. Run the create_users() method to generate two groups of 500 users.
3. Run jmeter and open (file->open) the .jmx file in $PROJECT_ROOT/jmeter. You may need to change the HTTP Request defaults to be the URL for your system. When you are ready, run the test.