Loadrunner vs JMeter – feature comparison

By Richard Pal

This time I present a brief comparison of two load-testing tool: Loadrunner (as called “the industry standard load testing tool”) and its open-source “counterpart” the Apache JMeter.

Why are exactly these two pieces compared? I made a quick research at indeed.com to find out the global demand on load testing professionals. We can conclude, that Loadrunner holds a strong position on the market and Apache JMeter is quickly taking up – quicker than any other performance tools today.

So, here you can find the comparison – guided through several factors which I hope could be helpful during tool selection:

	JMeter	Loadrunner / HP Performance Center
Platform	Java (Platform independent )	Microsoft Windows (server parts require ASP.NET) Performance Center requires several Windows Servers. Unix/Linux for load-generator is supported though.
Tool Architecture	Local script authoring UI with Load generation capabilities. UI-less load generator option exits.	Desktop clients for Load script authoring (Virtual User Generator) and result analysis (Analysis). Controller and Load genearator for test execution.
Remote load generators	Multiple Remote Load generators hosts are supported.	Distributed (even multi-region) load generator hosts. Over-firewall solutions.
Cloud-capability	Third-party Amazon image for cloud-based testing is available.	Via installing Load Generators on the cloud. Separate Cloud-test offering from HP is available.
Resource monitoring	Missing/limited	Performance center supports a variety of platforms/applications. N.B. JMX monitoring requires extra HP software (Sitescope). Resource metrics can be conveniently tracked with other metrics in the Analysis tool and on the online dashboard on Performance Center.
Documentation	Apache website provides documentation. Quality: mixed.	Context sensitive help (“press F1”) Quality: good
Community	Open source software community, mailing list.	Official forum on HP site. Activity is low/medium.
Scripting	A script is actually a graphical tree of nodes, with limited editing capabilities. Supports BeanShell for evaluations, checks, etc.	C (primarily) and Java. TruClient protocol: javascript.
HTTP traffic capturing	HTTP Proxy	Network capture of local applications. HTTP Proxy for remote applications. TCP dump for mobile/webservice protocols.
Script pacing	Via number of Threads setting. Timers provide (approximate) TPS control by automatic pacing.	Via the number of Virtual Users and iteration pacing.
Scenario composition	One script can contain multiple thread groups and form the scenario.	Separate scripts can be configured to constitute a scenario
Script runtime configuration	Via command-line parameter	Via command-line parameter, performance center automatically manages it.
Repointing test to a different AUT host	No out-of-the-box support. Script has to take over configuration parameter value.	No out-of-the-box support. Script has to take over configuration parameter value.
Protocol coverage	Focus primarily on HTTP and Java-related protocols (JMS, JDBC). Also supports FTP, LDAP, SOAP.	Broad coverage from plain HTTP-based protocols through proprietary enterprise products.
Extensibility	Java plugins	SDK

Tags: jmeter, Loadrunner

This entry was posted on June 11, 2012 at 8:24 am and is filed under Assessing Performance Tools, featured, HP Performance Center-General, JMeter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.