Blog

The following article is a guest post by Scott Moore.

Performance is important to me – I think most of you know that about me and it would be an understatement. I am also one of those people who are never satisfied with just doing things half way. I feel that way about the work that I do for myself and the partners I work with.

In an effort to ensure that we follow the same advice that we give to clients, I decided to go through an exercise with one of our partner’s webmaster to look into performance of the en Read Entire Entry

James Pulley Interview
Many people in the IT world know James Pulley as a thought leader regarding performance testing. We recently had a chance to catch up with James and ask him some questions about his views on the performance testing industry, as well as his involvement in the online show Perfbytes.

Northway: How did you get involved with performance testing?

James: On April 1, 1996 I joined Mercury Interactive as  pre-sales system’s engineer.   Prior to that, I had worked for several other vendors, including Microsoft a Read Entire Entry

Introduction to C Macros
C macros aren’t  discussed a lot by HP LoadRunner users, yet they are at the core of the C programming language used in VUGen. They can provide flexibility and power that reduces script development and maintenance times. A good example would be where a function cannot be used to encapsulate reusable code blocks because something in the code block must be known at compile time instead of at run time. In this case, there would be a global variable accessed within the code block, but the name of the variable Read Entire Entry

Community License
Probably one of the biggest changes to the product is HP’s new “Community License Bundle”. This replaces the old “Instant-on License” where HP LoadRunner would work with 10 users for a limited amount of time. This new bundle includes 50 Vusers, but it excludes Vusers for the GUI (UFT integration), COM/DCOM, and template protocols. Template protocols include C, JAVA, JavaScript, VB and VB Script, C#/C++.NET and VB .NET Vuser (Visual Studio Add-in), Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), VB.NET Vuser (Visual Studi Read Entire Entry

In our last blog article, we went through setting up an Amazon AWS account for EC2, and configuring AWS and LoadRunner in preparation for using Load Generators from the Cloud. At this point, we are ready to use them in a load test scenario.

Let’s first look at using an existing machine. I installed a Micro instance of Windows 2012 Server (Standard Edition) in EC2. It’s really slow and won’t do much. HP does not recommend a Micro account, so keep in mind we’re only trying to demonstrate the features at this time. Read Entire Entry

Let’s explore using Load Generators from the Amazon EC2 Cloud in LoadRunner 12.  Many people have asked me about it, wondering about any “gotcha’s” that might be out there. I have found a couple. In this blog entry, I want to focus on the configuration and setup of LoadRunner. There is quite a bit to consider.

First, set up an account instance on Amazon EC2. I was able to set up a free account with a Micro instance of a Windows 2012 Standard machine in less than thirty minutes.  However, using the Micro instance is no Read Entire Entry

This is a visual walk-through of the LoadRunner 12 installation screens. This will allow you to preview installation so that you can know what to expect.

After selecting the option to install the software, the following screens are presented:

You may need to unblock the ports within the Windows Firewall so the LoadRunner Agent can run on the machine:

Once installed, you should see the Community license bundle:

If you are installing a stand-alone Generator, there is a choice for Performance Cen Read Entire Entry

Considering installing or upgrading to LoadRunner 12? Below are the latest specifications for the Controller, Generator, MI Listener, VUGen, and Analysis.
Controller

Processor
CPU Type: Intel Core, Pentium, Xeon, AMD or compatibleSpeed: 1.6 GHz or faster

Memory (RAM)
Minimum: 2GB  Recommended: 4GB

Free  Hard Disk Space
Minimum: 40 GB

Screen Resolution
Minimum: 1024 x 768

Operating System

Windows 7 (SP1) 32 bit or 64 bit
Windows 8 64 bit
W Read Entire Entry

A brand spanking new version of LoadRunner is out, and Northway has the dirt! Buckle up, there is some cool stuff in this new version.
New LoadRunner Licensing
Probably one of the biggest changes to the product is HP’s new “Community License Bundle”. This replaces the old “Instant-on License” where LoadRunner would work with a minimum number of Vusers for a limited amount of time. This new bundle includes 50 Vusers for almost every protocol. It excludes Vusers for the GUI (UFT integration), COM/DCOM, and templa Read Entire Entry

HP’s May 2013 release of LoadRunner 11.52 was more than just a simple patch. While there are general performance improvements in VUGen and Analysis for general user functions, it also has several new features. This article will cover many of them so you can determine if it is time to upgrade.
Replay Statistics Summary
HP deployed multiple changes within the VUGen IDE.  A Replay Statistics Summary is now available for connection information made between each iteration, after a replay.  To disable/enable Replay Statistics go Read Entire Entry