MySQL Containers - Resource Monitor using J-Meter

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I have two containers running in an Ubuntu VM in Digital Ocean created from the following commands (Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imno51M24TQ&index=5&list=PLaDyYdZGRivhrKi56npbyFX2LTLs_--gq );

docker run --name db -it -p 3306:3306 mariadb

docker run --name mysql-client --link db:mysql mariadb sh -c ‘exec mysql -uroot -ptest -hmysql’

I’m trying to load test the database and monitor using J-Meter. I have J-Meter installed on the Ubuntu VM and executed the following command

jmeter -n -t DatabaseTest.JMX

However I’m receiving the following error

Error in NonGUIDriver java.lang.NullPointerException

Any tips on how to fix this? What other methods is there to monitor using load testing running containers?
Is cAdvisor a good tool to monitor my containers?

@nathanleclaire

Thanks
Del.

2

@pedro47 Looks like you have several issues.

From the looks of it JMeter seems to be primarily a GUI app. I’m not sure that it will work out of the box on a headless VM/server. You may want to try running in non-GUI mode.

For apps that run in containers, same as ever: Apache Benchmark, Bees With Machine Guns, Locust, DB load testing tools, etc. There’s really no difference to doing load testing of something running in a container vs. something that runs outside of one.

It’s got a nice little panel in my experience, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be a good starting point. However I would guess cAdvisor is not likely as the end-all-be-all of container monitoring and tools like Nagios, Riemann, Graphite, ELK, etc. (or their proprietary equivalents) should still play a critical role for you in monitoring your applications.

3

Nathan,

Thanks for getting back to me, I very much appreciate it!

So there wont be much difference in resource management etc regarding load testing simple applications in containers vs. VMs or locally? Interesting…

I was asked by my final year project panel to incorporate these tests into my final iteration of my report (including Docker Swarm in Azure with the voting app - thats why all the questions) - I’m trying the J-meter testing first on a DB then ill try tackle the voting app c/w swarm…