In this chapter, we covered the fundamentals of performance testing. We also discussed key concepts and activities surrounding performance testing in general. In addition, we installed JMeter, and you learned how to get it fully running on a machine and explored some of the configurations available with it. We explored some of the options that make JMeter a great tool of choice for your next performance testing assignment. These include the fact that it is free and mature, open source, easily extensible and customizable, completely portable across various operating systems, is a great plugin ecosystem, has a large user community, built-in GUI and recording, and validates test scenarios, among others. In comparison with other tools for performance testing, JMeter holds its stance.

In the next chapter, we will record our first test scenario and dive deeper into JMeter.