How to disable thread groups externally in JMeter - powershell

Question

I am using JMETER with my Powershell script and my JMX (XML for Jmeter) file is already created and I Launch the JMETER in Non-GUI mode and pass the JMX to it.
But previously it was working but I added some more Thread Groups with multiple HTTP requests now there may be some heap size issue.
So I thought of disabling some thread groups from the command line using my Automation script(Powershell).
How to disable some thread groups in the JMX file through the command line?

Answer 1

Define number of threads (virtual users) for Thread Groups using __P() function like:
${__P(group1threads,)} - for 1st thread group
${__P(group2threads,)} - for 2nd thread group
etc.
If you want to disable a certain Thread Group - just set "Number of Threads" to 0 via -J command-line argument like:
jmeter -Jgroup1threads=0 -Jgroup2threads=50 etc
However a better idea would be increasing Heap size as JMeter comes with quite low value (512 Mb) by default which is fine for tests development and debugging, but definitely not enough for the real load test. In order to do it locate the following line in JMeter startup script:
HEAP=-Xms512m -Xmx512m
And update the values to be something like 80% of your total available physical RAM. JMeter restart will be required to pick the new Heap size values up. For more information on JMeter tuning refer to 9 Easy Solutions for a JMeter Load Test “Out of Memory” Failure guide.

Answer 2

This is exactly explained in this article.
When you have multiple thread groups, you can execute a specific thread group from command line. You need to simply make the thread count to be 0 for the thread group.
Test Plan Design:
Lets say I have 5 thread groups like this. Instead of hardcoding the thread count values, use some property variables. ex: ${__P(user.registration.usercount)}
Now I want to execute only User Login & Order Creation. This can be achieved by passing properties directly throw command line / passing the property file name itself.
Properties:
Execution:
jmeter -n -t test.jmx -p mypropfile.properties
Check the JMeter command line options here.

Answer 3

If you are working with Concurrency Thread Groups and want to disable them with a property you could set the Hold Target Rate Time to zero. (or Target Concurrency to zero)
Set the property in user.properties
TG1-target_hold_rate_in_min=0
or
Set the property through the command line
jmeter -TG1-target_hold_rate_in_min =0