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What is the difference between a process and a thread?

process-vs-threadProcess is defined as the virtual address space and the control information necessary for the execution of a program while Threads are a way for a program to split itself into two or more simultaneously running tasks. In general, a thread is contained inside a process and different threads in the same process share some resources while different processes do not.

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In terms of Loadrunner, when we run Vuser as a process, LoadRunner creates 1 process called mmdrv.exe per Vuser. So if we have 10 Vusers, we will have 10 mmdrv.exe processes on our machines.

while when we run Vuser as a thread, LoadRunner creates 1 thread per Vuser. So if we have 10 Vusers, then we will have 1 process with 10 threads running inside it if the limit is 10 threads per process.

Running Vuser as a thread is more memory efficient that running Vuser as a process for obvious reasons that less memory resources are utilized when we run them as thread. I read somewhere that running as a process has an advantage that system becomes more stable. Now how is that stability achieved? I am not sure…can someone clarify this point to me?

Note that while running Java Virtual User, JVM’s are loaded per process and will follow the same principle above.

Related: What is RAM, Memory Usage, CPU Usage, Paging in terms of LoadRunner?

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