How to determine Breaking point of my Web application using JMeter?

Question

How can I determine Breaking point of my Web application using JMeter? I have executed the JMeter Testplan with different concurrent users load. EX. 300 users(0% error), 400 users(7% error in a sample, 5% error in another sample), 500 users(more than 10% error in 4 out of 6 samples). At What value of % Error, I can say system reached the Breaking point.I used concurrent users 300, 400, 500 in a PHP website. Should I consider any other parameter to determine breaking point. How many maximum concurrent users my application can support?

Answer 1

You need to first determine what are the performance requirements of your system. I.e. define exactly what "breaking point" means. For most of our customers, any error rate greater than 0% is considered breaking. But that is not true for all. Most would also consider very slow page load times to be "broken", even if the error rate is 0%, so we also look at the maximum and average page durations. I'd consider your app to be past the breaking point at 400 users, since you are reporting errors. However, it may have been considered too slow well before that (you haven't given us any data to determine that).

Hope that helps!