4 Points to note for Scenario Execution!

Points to note prior or during the scenario execution. This will save you unnecessary trouble looking at logs and reconfiguring the environment

1. First, ensure the environment for load testing is consistent for all participating machines (ie. Controller and Load Generators). As the scripts are sent to the Load Generator to be executed, it must have the same environmental settings of the recorded scripts (in VuGen). For example, if the script was recorded in RMI-Java, JDK 1.4 exists on the machine that performed the recording. In the same context, the Load Generator will also require the JDK 1.4 to be installed on it for the script to execute properly. Therefore, ensure JDK versions are installed and similar to the recording machine.

Another example is an activity of uploading of a file by the script. If the script points to a directory that only exists in the recording machine, the Load Generator will require to create the same directory for it to be executed correctly with a copy of the designated file too.

2. Prior the scenario execution, conduct a trial run of about 10% of the actual load. This will weed out and ensure your scripts and parameters are working.

3. Once you are satisfied with the 10% load, turn off all the logs (especially Full Extended Log). These options will create an overhead on the entire load test which may skew the final results.

4. Do not panic when errors occurred during a scenario execution and start posting on Yahoo Groups for quick-and-dirty answers. What the tool does is to find out problems, right? When errors start to occur during a scenario execution, what you should do is to scope down the possibility of the errors. Use the following questions to help you with it.

1. Does it happen at the start of the scenario execution?
2. Does it happen at the middle of the scenario execution?
3. If (2), is yes, then how many Vusers were running at that point of time when the errors appeared?

With the above, you can determine if the scenario is actually failing due to the following reasons to list a few.

1. The script is not working properly in the first place or configuration of the script failed.
2. The application is experiencing load during the scenario execution.
3. Network/server issues not pertaining to load have occurred during the scenario execution.

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