HP Performance Center 12 and HP LoadRunner 12 protocol bundles

Bundle name Protocols
.NET record/replay Microsoft® ADO.NET
Microsoft .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0
Windows® Communication Foundation (WCF)
Database ODBC
Oracle (2-Tier)
DCOM Microsoft COM/DCOM
Developer Unit Test (nUnit, jUnit, and Selenium)
SDK
GUI virtual users HP Functional Testing (HP QuickTest Professional)
Java record/replay Jacada
Java over HTTP Vuser
JMS
Network Domain Name Resolution (DNS)
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Microsoft Exchange (MAPI)
Post Office Protocol (POP3)
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
Tuxedo
Windows Sockets
CORBA—Java
RMI—Java (includes ORMI)
Oracle E-Business Oracle NCA
Oracle Web Applications 11i (Click and Script)
PeopleSoft Enterprise (Click and Script)
PeopleSoft—Tuxedo
Siebel—Web
Web (HTTP/HTML)
Remote access Citrix Virtual User (ICA)
Remote Terminal Emulation (RTE)
Remote desktop Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
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Data sheet |
 Rich Internet applications Action Message Format (includes RTMP/AMF)
AJAX Click and Script
AJAX TruClient—Firefox
AJAX TruClient—IE
Flex Virtual User (for Adobe® Flash)
Silverlight Vuser
Mobile TruClient
SAP SAP Click and Script
SAP GUI
SAP—Web
SAP Mobile Platform (SMP)
SOA MQSeries—Client
MQSeries—Server
Service Test Vuser
Web Services
Templates2 C Vuser
C#.NET Vuser (Visual Studio add-in)
C++.NET Vuser (Visual Studio add-in)
Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)
Java Vuser
JavaScript Vuser
VBScript Vuser
VB.NET Vuser (Visual Studio add-in)
VBNet Vuser
Web 2.0 Web and multimedia, RIA and SOA (combined)
Web and multimedia Media Player (MMS)
Real (RealPlayer)
Web (Click and Script)
Web (HTTP/HTML)
Mobile Applications Protocol
Wireless Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
WAP

LoadRunner – Script Anatomy Description

When you record and save a LoadRunner script in Vugen, there are a number of files that are created. Here’s what they are, and what they do and identification of the files you can safely delete..

Files Required for PlaybackDuring the course of recording and playback of scripts, the Vugen application will create many files, but only some of them are necessary for playback (either in Vugen or the Controller).

For example, say you have script named PerformancEngineer, with two Actions, Home and Forums, then the required files you would need in the PerformanceEngineer script directory would be:

* PerformanceEngineer.usr
* default.usp
* default.cfg
* globals.h
* Home.c
* Forums.c
* vuser_init.c
* vuser_end.c
* PerformanceEngineer.prm

Here’s what is in each file:

PerformanceEngineer.usr: Primarily, the .usr file defines which actions are used by the script. There are other properties which define which protocols are used and other settings, but most of the info
default.usp: Contains the run logic for the script
default.cfg: Contains the run-time settings (except for run-logic)
globals.h: The global headers file- visible and editable in Vugen
*.c (Action files): These are the action files containing your script code. You can edit these files in ny text editor, if you want. Sometimes it is easier than starting up Vugen
PerformanceEngineer.prm: Containes the parameter definitions
*.dat: Your data files, you can save these in the script directory or somewhere else, even a mapped network drive on a different server
Files Created During Vugen Playback

All of the files listed below can safely be deleted and not affect your ability to use the script.

result1: One or more result directories are created which contain script playback results
*.idx: The .idx files are binary “index” files created by Vugen for holding parameter values
PerformanceEngineer.ci:
combined_PerformanceEngineer.c: A list of #includes for all of your Actions
logfile.log, mdrv.log: random log files which you will probably never need to look at
mdrv_cmd.txt, options.txt: These text files contain commands and arguments for the script compiler and driver (mdrv) and are created dynamically, so you can safely delete them.
output.txt: This one is important. This file contains all of the log messages generated during script playback. The contents of this file appear in the “Output Window” section of Vugen
output.bak: A backup of the above file
pre_cci.c: Output from the C pre-processor, which contains all of the functions used in your scrip, from all of the Acitons and header files.

In summary, you can delete: *.txt, *.log, *.idx, *.bak, result*, pre_cci.c, combined_*, *.ci
Files Created During Recording

The ‘data’ directory in your script directory contains the script recording data. I usually delete this so it doesn’t get checked into my version control system, but you may want to keep it around if you use the graphical scripting mode and/or you want to compare playback vs. recording. The auto-correlation feature makes use of this data, too, but I haven’t had much sucess using that feature.

(This has been referred from the site performanceengineer.com)

Perceiver Monitoring tool

Perceiver is the new monitoring tool.This is introduced because Companies invest in enterprise applications and infrastructure to deliver optimal service to their end-user community. IT organizations are asked to manage more systems with fewer resources, while reducing costs. Performance Analysts and Capacity Planners are often asked to create volumes of custom charts and graphs for different audiences, instead of focusing on high value capacity planning and performance engineering responsibilities that provide a greater return on investment for the company.For this it is the best solution to use the BMC perceiver tool. 

KEY BENEFITS :
User interface allows non-experts to easily access actionable data 
Ad hoc queries to track, view, and relate performance metrics to business applications 
Common interface for enterprisewide systems and applications
Out-of-the-box value with BMC best practices view

FEATURES :
1.Enhances decision-making capabilities by providing direct access to relevant performance data through a dynamic Web interface
2.Provides ad-hoc queries to track, view and relate detailed performance metrics to business applications 
3.Increases the visibility and success of the performance organization by providing a consumer viewing tool for internal customers
4. Simplifies training and use via an easy-to-use web interface, eliminating the need for expert users and additional in-depth training
5. Maximizes the investment in BMC Performance Assurance by greatly increasing the number of direct users
6. Delivers out-of-the-box value with pre-loaded BMC Software Best Practice views including an online drag and drop editor for customization
7. Protects your performance investment by providing a performance viewing tool available across multiple platforms 

ABOUT BMC SOFTWARE BMC Software delivers the solutions:
IT needs to increase business value through better management of technology and IT processes. Our industry-leading Business Service Management solutions help you reduce cost, lower risk of business disruption, and benefit from an IT infrastructure built to support business growth and flexibility. Only BMC provides best-practice IT processes, automated technology management, and award-winning BMC Atrium technologies that offer a shared view into how IT services support business priorities. Known for enterprise solutions that span mainframe, distributed systems, and enduser devices, BMC also delivers solutions that address the unique challenges of the midsized business. Founded in 1980, BMC has offices worldwide and fiscal 2008 revenues of $1.73 billion. Activate your business with the power of IT. www.bmc.com

Source: http://discovery.bmc.com/

nslookup for multiple servers with a single click.

Nslookup is a command testing and troubleshooting the DNS servers. 

Nslookup can be run in two methods.They are interactive and noninteractive. Noninteractive mode is useful when only a single piece of data n eeds to be returned. 

Syntax: nslookup [-option] [hostname] [server]

some times it may need to get the dns details for the large number of servers at that time we need to run the command multiple times and capture the values each and time we hit the command.

To simplify this situation i have found an interesting too named as dnsdataview tool.
You can nslookup multiple number of servers at a single click with the clean GUI.

Download the tool here:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dnsdataview.zip

Reference: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dns_records_viewer.html

WHAT IS A REVERSE PROXY SERVER?

A proxy server is a go-between or intermediary server that forwards requests for content from multiple clients to different servers across the Internet. A reverse proxy  server is a type of proxy server that typically sits behind the firewall in a private network and directs client requests to the appropriate back-end server. A reverse proxy provides an additional level of abstraction and control to ensure the smooth flow of network traffic between clients and servers.

Reverse proxy server benefits:

1.Load balancing: A reverse proxy server can act as a “traffic cop,” sitting in front of your back-end servers and distributing client requests across a group of servers in a manner that maximizes speed and capacity utilization while ensuring no one server is overloaded, which can degrade performance. If a server goes down, the load balancer redirects traffic to the remaining online servers.

2.Web acceleration:Reverse proxies can compress inbound and outbound data, as well as cache commonly requested content, both of which speed up the flow of traffic between clients and servers. They can also perform additional tasks such as SSL encryption to take load off of your web servers, thereby boosting their performance.

3.Security and anonymity :By intercepting requests headed for your back-end servers, a reverse proxy server protects their identities and acts as an additional defense against security attacks. It also ensures that multiple servers can be accessed from a single record locater or URL regardless of the structure of your local area network

SSL received a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key. (Error code: ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key) resolved

while recording any application with the load runner,or some times running in to manually we may get the below error in mozilla firefox.

Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to consoleeset.soges-tech.ca:8443. SSL received a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key in Server Key Exchange handshake message. (Error code: ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key)
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Solution for the above problem:

• Type about:config in the address bar of mozilla firefox
• search for security.ssl3.dhe_rsa_aes_128_sha and security.ssl3.dhe_rsa_aes_256_sha
• Set them both to false by double clicking on it

How can we handle captcha in Load Runner?

CAPTCHA (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2003 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper, and John Langford.

The purpose of the CAPTCHA is to defeat the automation. CAPTCHA are based upon the turning test and as such the main purpose is to differentiate human from machine. Pattern recognition, vocal, visual (dynamic/static) has been broken several time. Much of the time it become a pain for the end-user, because they are a pain to decipher. Cultural reference or social pattern could be proven useful, achieve the same purpose and be less annoying for your customer

If you want to script the application which has CAPTCHA with the load runner you have to get the below things from the DEV.

• To disable CAPTCHA validation
• To make the CAPTCHA as static
• To remove the CAPTCHA
• To send the CAPTCHA value in server response(So that you can correlate)
• Provide the CAPTCHA details which are comes in the data base sequentia

Error "An Authentication object was not found in the SecurityContext" in load runne

while replaying the script you get the error An Authentication object was not found in the Security Context

The reason for the SOAP fault is: 

"An Authentication object was not found in the SecurityContext"

As mentioned by above error, the application  is mostly launched via a web-link where the run time jars / dlls are downloaded locally and application is launched. During launching itself the application takes the credentials from local system (your AD account details) and authenticates the user. In case of replaying this operation in VUGen this authentication information is not available, this can be done by sending the authentication information in the header before the first web-service request as shown below:




Otherwise if your web service method has property for sending authentication object then you can do so in the request itself.

CPU of Load Generator Exceeded 80%

Recently i ran in to a load test and i saw the CPU of Load Generator Exceeded 80% and here are the ways to find out the root cause:

There could be several things, but using 2008 machines on VMs is common. If you are using web vusers should be a small footprint. 

• Check if you have admin rights on the system or not?
• Is CPU consumption above 80% during the entirety of the test
• Check for any mismatch in versions in patch version
• Try to run the agent using "Run as administrator"
• Check for the mdrv process in the htask manager of the controller and the load generator machines while running the test
• make sure to have the same patches level on every component, having a version mix is a real problem.
• Please check if you have the following components installed on your LG machine McAfee Antivirus or  Symantec NetBackup

"Error -27778: SSL protocol error when attempting to connect with host" in load runner

Recently i had some issues with SSL protocol error,while running the scripts in controller i am facing the "Error -27778: SSL protocol error when attempting to connect with host",so finally i got rid of that by using the below steps in the script

Keep the below code at the start of of script

use web_set_sockets_option("SSL_VERSION", "TLS");
    web_set_sockets_option("SSL_VERSION", "1"); 

This forces the SSL connection to the server to use version 1 of the SSL protocol rather than letting the server suggest a version during the connection handshake.

We had same issue on vugen 11.50 with new patch also then  we enabled the below setting
Run-Time Settings -> Preferences -> Select "WinInet Replay Engine instead of Sockets (Windows Only)."

HttpSendRequest" failed, Windows error code=12002 - Perf Center Error_load runner error

While running an internal application using the load runner Controller i was getting the "HttpSendRequest" failed, Windows error code=12002 - Perf Center Error .I solved these by following the below steps:

1.Check Vugen runs script as a process or running  vusers asa  thread?

You can check this in Run time settings-General-Miscellaneous-Multithreading then uncheck the value

2.Are you working with WinInet, and the error itself comes from WinInet API not specifically Vugen.We can see in part of the replay  errors comes from resources during the replay where they were timed out.

If we are forced to use WinInet then this will occur, but if you can use Sockets you may want to try that option instead or a Click and Script protocol.

you can uncheck the WinInet replay instead of sockets (Windows only) in the runtime settings-preferences.This will solve the problem.

3.And the another option is to use web_set_max_retries ("X") to increase the limit of 30 sec.You can place this before the action which is failing but  I wouldn't recommend that.

HttpSendRequest time out only occurres when any transaction takes more than 30 sec to connect to server. This default 30 sec time is because of the use of WinInet Replay engine. Thus this error pops up when you are running script with winInet replay and transactions are taking more than 30 sec. Only thing to get rid of this error is to fine tune the whole system and check the backend and servers to see any request que has formed up.

How to run Performance Center in Professional mode WAN Emulation

Today i will explain about the *.NTX file located on a shared location here.

In the Performance Center the default setting hides the option to use an *.NTX file from a shared f]]location in Professional mode. This can be downloaded from a VE Desktop server.

Here is the process :The shared drive must be accessible to the Controller machines.

• Go to Performance Center user site and create a new test for the load test.Then go to the Workload tab. All the Load Generators should be defined before starting the load test.
• Click the WAN Emulation Settings and select the load generator from the list of LGs.
• Enable the WAN Emulation check-box and the go to WAN Emulation Settings .
• go to Additional Settings
• Enable the Professional mode includes opening files located on a shared drive check-box
• Click OK
• Select the Professional radio-button
• Click the Browse button and locate the NTX file to be used for that Load Generator
• Then click OK

Shared data files usage in Performance Center

In the Performance center, the additional include files get pushed to load generators is to add them to the script in Vugen. This can be accomplished in Vugen by going to the File menu and selecting "Add to script." Any files you select will be added to the action navigation pane in Vugen and will be automatically pushed to any load generators during a test. You should not have to map any directories on the load generators .

If you are using a shared file (such as a function header) that you do not want to attach to all scripts, just make sure that the directory linked to in the script is accessible on all load generators. If not, the appropriate mappings must be completed so the file is accessible during test runs.The file must be placed on the all the load generators which are used in the test

Test id and Test instance ID in performance center | PC test id and test instance id

Here i will show how to find the test id and test instance id in performance center.
Usually people considers the as the  test instance id,but both are different.

To find the test id and test instance id,Follow the below steps.

• Go to controller
• Go to the test plan and from there go to the scenarios.

• Open the scenario for which you need the Test id and Test instance id.
• Click on the edit scenario button.
• As shown in below, the number which is highlighted is the test id,here it it 

Now click on the Home button and go to the same scenario ,where you will see the test instance tab.Click on the instances and you can find the Test instance id that ass

How to change jenkins default port 8080

Follow these simple steps and change the default port number on Jenkins.

• Go to the Jenkins directory we installed the Jenkins (By default, it is located under C://Program Files//Jenkins)
• Open the Jenkins.xml file.
• Search for "httpPort=8080" (as shown in below image) and replace the "8080" with the new port number that you want to change, you can put 8081.

 

• Save it and restart the Jenkins.
• Browse the Jenkins url as https://localhost:8081

How to start jenkins in windows | How to restart jenkins server in windows machine | How to stop jenkins in windows

To restart the jenkins server in windows machines do the following:

Open the Command prompt
Go to your Jenkins installation directory (Default it is located under  under C://Programfiles//Jenkins)and execute the below commands

To Stop Jenkins:
jenkins.exe stop

To Start Jenkins:
jenkins.exe start

To Restart Jenkins:
jenkins.exe restart

Story behind Jenkins logo | Jenkins History | Jenkins logo background

A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its appearance.


Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the founder of Hudson project which then forked into currently known as Jenkins, He fondly calls it a butler which can get your task done according to your order. Hudson as well as Jenkins are very British sounding names where butler services originated and still are pretty popular. This is the motivation which Kohsuke Kawaguchi and  also time to time Kohsuke Kawaguchi casually mentions in his talks about this.

How Load runner Works ?

Suppose you want to test a bank server that serves many automatic teller machines (ATMs).

The ATMs provide a full range of banking services to the bank's customers--such as withdrawing and depositing cash. 

To test the bank server using LoadRunner, you create a scenario. The scenario defines the actions that are performed on the server during the load test. During the scenario that loads and monitors the bank server, you want to:

1. emulate conditions of controlled load on the server
2. emulate conditions of maximum load on the server
3. measure server performance under load
4. check where performance delays occur: network or client delays, CPU performance, I/O delays, database locking, or other issues at the server monitor the network and server resources under load