Jay Harris is Cpt. LoadTest

I know. I haven’t posted in a while. But I’ve been crazy busy. Twelve hour days are my norm, right now. But enough complaining; let’s get to the good stuff.

By now you know my love for PsExec. I discovered it when trying to find a way to add assemblies to a remote GAC [post]. I’ve found more love for it. Now, I can remotely execute my performance tests!

Execute LoadRunner test using NAnt via LoadRunner:

<exec basedir="${P1}"
  program="psexec"
  failonerror="false"
  commandline='\${P2} /u ${P3} /p ${P4} /i /w "${P5}" cmd /c wlrun -Run
    -InvokeAnalysis -TestPath "${P6}" -ResultLocation "${P7}"
    -ResultCleanName "${P8}"' />

(I’ve created generic parameter names so that you can read it a little better.)
P1: Local directory for PsExec
P2: LoadRunner Controller Server name
P3: LoadRunner Controller Server user username. I use an Admin-level ID here, since this ID also needs rights to capture Windows PerfMon metrics on my app servers.
P4: LoadRunner Controller Server user password
P5: Working directory on P2 for 'wlrun.exe', such as C:\Program Files\Mercury\Mercury LoadRunner\bin
P6: Path on P2 to the LoadRunner scenario file
P7: Directory on P2 that contains all results from every test
P8: Result Set name for this test run

'-InvokeAnalysis' will automatically execute LoadRunner analysis at test completion. If you properly configure your Analysis default template, Analysis will automatically generate the result set you want, save the Analysis session information, and create a HTML report of the results. Now, put IIS on your Controller machine, and VDir to the main results directory in P7, and you will have access to the HTML report within minutes after your test completes.

Other ideas:

• You can also hook it up to CruiseControl and have your CC.Net report include a link to the LR report.
• Create a nightly build in CC.Net that will compile your code, deploy it to your performance testing environment, and execute the performance test. When you get to work in the morning, you have a link to your full performance test report waiting in your inbox.

The catch for all of this: you need a session logged in to the LoadRunner controller box at all times. The '/i' in the PsExec command means that it interacts with the desktop.

Sidenote

PsExec is my favorite tool right now. I can do so many cool things. I admit, as a domain administrator, I also get a little malicious, sometimes. The other day I used PsExec to start up solitaire on a co-workers box, then razzed him for playing games on the clock.

For my needs, the biggest hole in Mercury LoadRunner is its lack of page size monitoring. LoadRunner can monitor anything else imaginable, including transaction counts, transaction times, errors, and all Windows Performance Monitor metrics. However, monitoring page size, download times, and HTTP Return codes are only available through programming.

The following function will monitor the page size of all responses, logging an error if it exceeds you specified limit, as well as track all values on the user-defined graphs.

si_page_size_limit(int PageLimit, char* PageName, char *PageURL, long TransactionID){
//
// Page Size Limit Monitor
// Author: Jay Harris, http://www.cptloadtest.com, (c) 2004 Jason Harris
// License: This work is licensed under a
//    Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
//    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
//
// Created: 10-Aug-2004
// Last Modified: 10-May-2005, Jay Harris
//
// Description:
// Logs an error to the log, pass or fail, including the applicable status, if logging is enabled.
// Plots page size datapoint to User Defined graph.
//
// Inputs:
// int PageLimit Maximum page size allowed, in bytes
// char* PageName Name of the page, such as the Title. For identification in logs.
// char* PageURL URL of the page. For reference in logs. FOr identification in logs.
// long TransactionID Transaction ID for the current request.
// Note: Transaction must be explicitly opened via lr_start_transaction_instance.
// Note: TransactionID is returned by lr_start_transaction_instance.
//
 
    int iPageSize = web_get_int_property(HTTP_INFO_DOWNLOAD_SIZE);
    char DataPointName[1024] = “Response Size [”;
    strcat(DataPointName, PageName);
    strcat(DataPointName, “]”);

    if (PageLimit < iPageSize) {
        lr_continue_on_error(1);
        lr_debug_message(LR_MSG_CLASS_BRIEF_LOG | LR_MSG_CLASS_EXTENDED_LOG,
	    “Page Size Check FAILED - %s [%s] exceeds specified page size limit of %d (Total: %d)”,
	    PageName,PageURL,PageLimit,iPageSize);
        lr_continue_on_error(0);
    } else {
        lr_debug_message(LR_MSG_CLASS_BRIEF_LOG | LR_MSG_CLASS_EXTENDED_LOG,
	    “Page Size Check PASSED - %s [%s] meets specified page size limit of %d (Total: %d)”,
	    PageName,PageURL,PageLimit,iPageSize);
    }
    if (lr_get_trans_instance_status(TransactionID) == LR_PASS) {
        lr_user_data_point_instance_ex(DataPointName,iPageSize,TransactionID,DP_FLAGS_EXTENDED_LOG);
    }
    return 0;
}