Apache JMeter is the leading open-source tool for load and performance testing. This blog post will focus on installing JMeter and creating test plans.

Step 1: How to Install JMeter
It’s important to always use the latest JMeter version.
Here are the steps you should take:

1. Install the latest 64 bit JRE or JDK. This is needed as JMeter is a pure Java application.
2. Go to the JMeter website and find the Binary to download to your computer
3. Once downloaded, move this file to your preferred location, extract it and go to the folder and then the bin directory.
4. Take a look at the directly. You should see a series of scripts that can run JMeter in various modes.

Congratulations! You have all you need to start working on your test plan.

Building Your First JMeter Test Plan
Launch JMeter by switching to the “bin” directory and typing the following:

1. For Mac, Linux or Unix: ./jmeter.sh
2. For Windows: jmeter.bat

You should now see an empty test plan.
Don’t see the JMeter GUI yet? Check that:

● The JAVA_HOME environment variable points to the JRE or JDK installation folder
● The JAVA_HOME/bin folder has been added to the PATH environment variable

What is a Test Plan?
In your test plan, you should specify the overall settings and outline the steps that you want JMeter to execute while it runs. For your own reference, you can also name it and add comments.

Creating a Complete Test Plan
You Need To:
Set Up at Least One Thread Group and Sampler
A thread group is where you specify the number of users that you want to simulate. One thread equals one user. By setting the ramp-up period, you can also tell JMeter how long it should take to reach all of the threads that you’ve chosen. You can also set the number of iterations for each user in the group with the Loop Count.

Set up Samplers
Samplers are super important as they perform the actual work in JMeter. JMeter executes the samplers and writes down the results, such as: start time, duration, success, response messages etc. Listeners can be used to view these results (but more about that in a bit). The HTTP Request, which lets you send a HTTP or HTTPS request to a web server, is the most commonly used sampler.
We Recommend That You:

Add Timers
Here you can set the duration of the delay from one request to the next (i.e. how many seconds you want JMeter to wait before navigating from the homepage to the features page).

Add Configuration Elements
These allow you to manage elements, like the cache and the cookies, during the test. We recommend adding the “HTTP Cache Manager” and the “HTTP Cookie Manager” to …