Once the test run is complete, we will be left with a range of results to examine. The listeners we add to our test plan will determine the kind of information we can analyze. The key information for us to analyze from our test run are Summary Report and Response Time Graph.

As its name suggests, Summary Report provides us with a summary of the responses received during the test. From it, we can ascertain details such as the average, minimum, and maximum response times for requests as well as an indication of the throughput of our server. Throughput is a good indicator of how well our server will handle the load as it tells us how many requests per second it can handle:

The summary report gives us a very good baseline measure that we can use to compare results against. For example, the results from this test were performed on a newly configured server without any users accessing it. They show that this particular server can handle a throughput of 8...