Load Runner Faq

LoadRunner Frequently Asked Questions Maintained by Mark McWhinney, [email protected] Version 1.1 March 25, 2004 LoadRunner Discussion Group.......................................................................................................... ..........1 What is the purpose of this group?..................................................................................................... ......1 Where is the web site?............................................................................................................... ..............1 How do I post messages to the group?....................................................................................... .............1 What types of messages are allowed?............................................................................................. ........1 Is the discussion moderated?............................................................................................................... ....1 How do I unsubscribe?..................................................................................................................... ........1 Learning LoadRunner................................................................................................................ ..................2 How can I learn to use LoadRunner?.......................................................................................... .............2 What do I need to know to do load testing in addition to knowing how to use the LoadRunner tool?.......2 Where can I get help?........................................................................................................... ...................2 Applications....................................................................................................................... ..........................2 What protocols does LoadRunner support?.............................................................................. ...............2 What can I monitor with LoadRunner?.................................................................................. ...................3 How many users can I emulate with LoadRunner on a PC?................................................ ....................4 How much memory is needed per user?.......................................................................................... ........4 Product................................................................................................................................ ........................4 Can I get a evaluation copy of LoadRunner?...................................................................... .....................4 What is the current shipping version of LoadRunner?....................................................................... .......4 What is the difference between LoadRunner and Astra LoadTest?............................................. .............4 What is the relation between LoadRunner and Topaz?............................................................. ...............4 How much does LoadRunner cost?.................................................................................. .......................4 Where can I buy LoadRunner?..................................................................................... ...........................5

LoadRunner Discussion Group What is the purpose of this group? Discussion of issues related to Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner load testing tool. Where is the web site? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loadRunner How do I post messages to the group? Send email to [email protected] What types of messages are allowed? Any question or constructive comment about technical issues related to LoadRunner or performance management in general is good. Job postings for positions primarily involving the use of LoadRunner are OK. Messages should be in English. Messages about issues unrelated to LoadRunner, postings for unrelated jobs, and personal at-

tacks are not OK. Requests for license keys or answers for test questions are not allowed and are reported to Mercury, so please do not ask. "How-to" questions related to information that can be easily found by reading the LoadRunner documentation are discouraged. Likewise, questions of a very general nature are also discouraged. If in doubt, just ask. Sincere questions, usually get sincere answers. Is the discussion moderated? Sort of. Anyone can join the discussion group without approval and can post a message without review. However, the moderator may remove messages or ban members at his discretion without notice if there are abuses. How do I unsubscribe? Go to the group’s web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loadRunner and click on the

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Leave Group link or send an email to [email protected]

code. There is also a icon script view which completely hides the C code.

Learning LoadRunner

Communication. Load testing is not a heads down coding exercise. You will work with many parts of an organization to coordinate activities, schedules and resources. Daily interaction with a variety of people requires good oral and written communication skills as well as good people skills. If you prefer to sit in a cube by yourself, you should stay in functional testing or development.

How can I learn to use LoadRunner? The hardcopy and PDF documentation that is shipped with LoadRunner is fairly good. You can learn the tool and something about load testing by reading the documentation. Mercury does not send documentation to non-customers. Please do not ask the forum members to send you a copy of the PDF. Mercury Interactive offers courses at their facility in Sunnyvale and other US cities. They also can conduct courses at your site. Mercury has certified training partners that also offer classroom training. Some community colleges and for-profit training companies offer LoadRunner courses as well. What do I need to know to do load testing in addition to knowing how to use the LoadRunner tool? Unlike functional testing you need to know more than just how the application under test functions. You need to know how the components behind the client work and what the performance issues for the components are. Specifically, you need to know the following knowledge and skills: Components such as web servers, application servers, database servers, operating systems, networks and network elements such as load balancers. You need not have "guru" level knowledge of each of the components but should have operational knowledge and an understanding of the performance issues associated with the components. For example, a load tester should know what multi-way joins, indexes and spin counts are and what affect they have on a database server. Protocol(s) used between the client and server such as HTTP/HTML, ODBC, SQL*NET, and DCOM. C. The LoadRunner script language is ANSI C. It helps to know the C language, but the scripts are generated and manipulated by LoadRunner, so there is usually not need to directly edit the

Where can I get help? Mercury Interactive Customer Support Site. Visit Mercury Interactive's customer support site (http://support.mercuryinteractive.com) for support hours, contact information, and other important information about customer support. Use the site to submit support service requests online, and to access knowledge base articles, user discussion forums, patches, on-line documentation and the latest product information. This is available to only customers. Mercury Interactive Web Site. Visit Mercury Interactive at (http://www.mercuryinteractive.com) for information on new products, events, a list of local distributors, and more. This is available to the public. Mercury Interactive Phone Support. For customers in the US, Canada, and the rest of the Americas, you can get phone support between 6 AM and 5 PM Pacific Time at (877) TEST-HLP or locally at (408) 822-5400. This is available to only customers. For all others, see the contact list on the web at http://support.mercuryinteractive.com/cgibin/portal/CSO/contacts.jsp

Applications What protocols does LoadRunner support? LoadRunner ships with support for the following protocols. Other protocols are available but are not necessarily full supported. E-Business FTP LDAP Web/Winsocket Dual Protocol Palm SOAP Web (HTTP/HTML) Wireless

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i-mode VoiceXML WAP Streaming Media Player (MMS) Real Mailing Services Internet Messaging (IMAP) MS Exchange (MAPI) POP3 SMTP Enterprise Java Beans Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) Rmi-Java

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Server Monitors NT/UNIX/Linux monitors - Provide hardware, network and operating system performance metrics, such as CPU, memory and network throughput.

Distributed Components COM/DCOM Corba-Java Rmi-Java Middleware Jacada Tuxedo 6 Tuxedo 7 ERP Baan Oracle NCA PeopleSoft - Tuxedo Siebel - DB2 CLI Siebel - Oracle Siebel - MSSQL SAP Client/Server DB2 CLI Domain Name Resolution (DNS) Informix MS SQL Server ODBC Oracle (2-Tier) Sybase CtLib Sybase Dblib Windows Sockets Legacy Terminal Emulation (RTE) Custom C Vuser Javascript Vuser Java Vuser VB Script Vuser VB Vuser

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Antara.net

Application Deployment Solutions 

Citrix MetaFrame (available only for LoadRunner)

Network Monitors 

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Network delay monitor - Provides a breakdown of the network segments between client and server, as well as network delays. SNMP monitor - Provides performance data for network devices such as bridges and routers.

Web Server Performance Monitors Web server monitors - Provide performance data inside the Web servers, such as active connections, hits per second, etc.   

Client-side Monitors End-to-end transaction monitors - Provide enduser response times, hits per second, transactions per second. Hits per Second

NT server resources UNIX / Linux server monitor

Load Appliances Performance Monitors

What can I monitor with LoadRunner? LoadRunner ships with support for the following components. Other monitors are available but are not necessarily full supported.

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HTTP Responses per Second Pages Downloaded per Second Throughput Transaction Response Time Transaction per Second (Passed) Transaction per Second (Failed) User-defined Data Point Virtual User Status Web Transaction breakdown Graphs

Apache Microsoft IIS iPlanet (NES)

Web Application Server Performance Monitors Web application server monitor - Provides performance data inside the Web application server, such as connections per second, active database connections, etc.    

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Allaire ColdFusion ATG Dynamo BEA WebLogic (via JMX) BEA WebLogic (via SNMP)

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BroadVision IBM WebSphere iPlanet Application Server Microsoft COM+ Monitor Microsoft Active Server Pages Oracle 9iAS HTTP Server SilverStream

execution (iteration pacing and think times) and the amount of logging. How much memory is needed per user? You can get some approximation of the memory needs by looking at the "LR 7.02 footprints.pdf" file located on the LoadRunner discussion group at groups.yahoo.com/group/LoadRunner/files.

Streaming Media Performance Monitors (available only for LoadRunner) Streaming specific monitors for measuring the end user quality on the client side, and isolate performance bottlenecks on the server-side.  

Microsoft Windows Media Server Real Networks RealServer

CheckPoint FireWall-1

Database Server Resource Monitors Database monitor - Provides performance data inside the database, such as active database connections, etc.    

SQL Server Oracle DB2 Sybase (available only for LoadRunner)

ERP Performance Monitors (available only for LoadRunner) 

SAP R/3 Monitor

Middleware Performance Monitors 

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Can I get a evaluation copy of LoadRunner? No. Mercury does not ship evaluation copies of LoadRunner. You can contact Mercury or a Mercury reseller to get a demo at your site or via Webex. What is the current shipping version of LoadRunner? 7.8

Firewall Server Resource Monitors 

Product

Tuxedo - Provides performance data inside a BEA Tuxedo application server, such as current requests in queue. IBM WebSphere MQ (MQSeries) (available only for LoadRunner)

In addition to these monitors, LoadRunner also supports user defined monitors which allows you to easily integrate the results from other measurement tools with LoadRunner data collection. How many users can I emulate with LoadRunner on a PC? This greatly depends on the configuration of the PC (number of CPUs, CPU speed, memory and operating system), the protocol(s) used, the size and complexity of the script(s), the frequency of

What is the difference between LoadRunner and Astra LoadTest? Astra LoadTest is another load test tool from Mercury Interactive built specifically for testing web applications. Relative to LoadRunner it:  Supports only HTTP and HTTPS protocols.  Has less functionality.  Uses the VBScript scripting language.  Has a larger footprint (~ 5 MBytes).  Costs less.  Is easier to learn. In that LoadRunner supports web applications plus much more, it is the preferred tool for load testing web applications. The exception is if the load testers are non-technical (bad idea) or the load test project's budget is too limited to afford LoadRunner. What is the relation between LoadRunner and Topaz? Topaz is Mercury Interactive's line of products and hosted services for monitoring applications after deployment to production. The Topaz products are built with LoadRunner technology and use the same script recorder. Scripts built for load testing with LoadRunner can be used by Topaz for monitoring without modification. How much does LoadRunner cost? The main cost drivers for a LoadRunner license are the number of users to be simulated and number and type of protocols used. You will need to talk a sales representative to price out the various components.

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The total cost of LoadRunner typically runs from USD$50,000 to $100,000 or more. Maintenance cost is 18% of the total list price. The maintenance includes new LoadRunner releases, patches, phone support and access to the support web site. Where can I buy LoadRunner? LoadRunner is sold by Mercury Interactive and by authorized resellers.

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