LoadRunner Frequently Asked Questions
Maintained by Mark McWhinney , msm@powertest.com
Version 1.0
Discussion of issues related to Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner load testing tool.
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 attacks are not OK. Requests for license keys or answers for the CPS exam 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.
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 without notice if there are abuses.
Mercury Interactive offers courses at their facility in Sunnyvale US
Some community colleges and for-profit training companies offer LoadRunner courses as well.
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, but it is best to take at least an introductory class first. Mercury does not send documentation to non-customers.
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 code. There is also a icon script view which completely hides the C code.
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.
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 on-line, 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. 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.
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
i-mode
VoiceXML
WAP
Streaming
Media Player (MMS)
Real
Mailing Services
Internet Messaging (IMAP)
MS Exchange (MAPI)
POP3
SMTP
Rmi-Java
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
LoadRunner ships with support for the following components. Other monitors are available but are not necessarily full supported.
Client-side Monitors
End-to-end transaction monitors - Provide end-user response times, hits per second, transactions per second.
§ Virtual User Status
§ User-defined Data Point
§ Transaction Response Time
§ Transaction per Second (Passed)
§ Transaction per Second (Failed)
§ Web Transaction breakdown Graphs
§ Hits per Second
§ Throughput
§ HTTP Responses per Second
§ Pages Downloaded per Second
Server Monitors
NT/UNIX/Linux monitors - Provide hardware, network and operating system performance metrics, such as CPU, memory and network throughput.
§ NT server resources
§ UNIX / Linux server monitor
Load Appliances Performance Monitors
§ Antara.net
Application Deployment Solutions
§ Citrix MetaFrame (available only for LoadRunner)
Network Monitors
§ 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.
§ 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.
§ BroadVision
§ Allaire ColdFusion
§ Microsoft Active Server Pages
§ SilverStream
§ BEA WebLogic (via SNMP)
§ BEA WebLogic (via JMX)
§ IBM WebSphere
§ iPlanet Application Server
§ Oracle 9iAS HTTP Server
§ Ariba
§ ATG Dynamo
Streaming Media Performance Monitors
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
Firewall Server Resource Monitors
§ 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
ERP Performance Monitors
§ SAP R/3 Monitor
Java Performance Monitors
§ TowerJ
§ JProbe
§ J2EE Performance Monitor
Middleware Performance Monitors
§ 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.
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 execution (iteration pacing and think times) and the amount of logging.
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.
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.
7.6
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.
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.
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.
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.
LoadRunner is sold by Mercury Interactive and by authorized resellers.
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