---
title: "Conducting a load test"
date: "2024-02-14T06:18:38+00:00"
summary: "Learn how to conduct an effective load test for your website. Follow our step-by-step guide to set up, calculate volume, and troubleshoot common issues for accurate performance assessment."
image:
type: "page"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/conducting-load-test"
id: "fc3913b5-b9bd-4f17-989d-74bc08f7ccbd"
---

Table of contents will be added

Important

Before you begin testing, you must [contact Acquia Support](/service-offerings/tickets#create-support-ticket) to provide some additional information about your planned testing. For more information, see [notify Acquia Support](/acquia-cloud-platform/performance/load/planning#loadtest-tell-acquia).

To conduct a load test on your application, complete the steps listed on this page.

Pointing load test traffic to Acquia
------------------------------------

You cannot use the Acquia load test IP directly. You must route traffic for a domain in the Acquia `Prod` environment to the load test IP through public DNS or through a `HOSTS` entry. You can use Acquia’s default domain or any other domain that is added to the **Domains** list for the `Prod` environment in the Cloud Platform dashboard. Blazemeter provides a `HOSTS` override feature directly from the test dashboard. You can add an IP and domain, and your test traffic uses the designated mapping without needing a public DNS rule. For more information, see [Blazemeter: DNS Override](https://guide.blazemeter.com/hc/en-us/articles/13261976962961).

Creating a load test script
---------------------------

To use a [JMeter](https://jmeter.apache.org/)\-based load test platform, you must have a `jmx` file, which is a scripted representation of the load test scenario. The `jmx` file can be created by using JMeter. You can install and configure the [Blazemeter](https://www.drupal.org/project/blazemeter) module on the website.

Calculating load test volume
----------------------------

You must ensure that the load test traffic volume is as exact as possible. For information about hits per second in Blazemeter, see [Blazemeter: Calculating Hits Per Second](https://guide.blazemeter.com/hc/en-us/articles/207420695-How-do-I-Correlate-the-Number-of-Concurrent-Users-with-Hits-Per-Second).

Acquia does not recommend that you compensate for a lower number of available concurrent users with a greater request rate. For various reasons, this approach yields an invalid test result. If the free Blazemeter offering does not meet your needs, you can upgrade the Blazemeter subscription or use another load generation tool that can support the desired traffic.

Blazemeter error rates and keep-alive
-------------------------------------

If a page contains resources that time out when using Blazemeter, you might get a high error rate in Blazemeter reports.

_Workaround_:

Update the value for the `use_keepalive` parameter in the `jmx` file from `true` to `false` by using the following code:

    <boolProp name="HTTPSampler.use_keepalive">false</boolProp>

Typically, the actual request is returned as expected from the Acquia infrastructure. Setting the value to `false` provides a better understanding of the actual error rate from the website.