OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) Reviews

The primary use is for load testing and stress testing of applications. It tests whether services are running at an optimal point or not. It can also be used for benchmarking with other industry standards.

My admin was very useful for finding out how the system responds to load, stress, and normal situations, as well as benchmarking with other industry competitors. It also improved our response time, memory delegation, and CPU delegation. In addition, we used LoadRunner to optimize our database and website.

The features that are most valuable are synchronization capabilities and the ability to interact with it on different types of systems and protocols. It is a market leader and it integrates with different applications. When you compare it to JMeter, LoadRunner is more flexible and has more capabilities than JMeter to support different technologies.

There is room for improvement of the pilot processing and forwarding results based on the dump analysis. We have a generator, root controller, different agents, and an analyzer, so all of these are very important when it comes to LoadRunner.

LoadRunner also has to create a low-cost version that supports simpler testing and only some of the simple features would be included. This would allow people to use LoadRunner and get support from LoadRunner in terms of application testing. It is a principle that if people will get to use LoadRunner for free, LoadRunner will get more business and major payback.

I would rate it 6 out of 10, because LoadRunner is a vast thing, starting from those scenarios and then getting more into users, putting more points, correlation, load testing, and benchmarking. I have this part and hope it works well with the system. All of this is very complex. It takes a long time to learn the system well.

The stability of the solution is mostly good. The only thing is that we used a distributor to fix the problems when something went wrong at one point. If it was working out well, the results of that thing would still give you wrong results. So the distributor is not really good with problems, but the local setup is good with no problems.

We can scale it up at any point in time because we can get a distributor. We can add variants, controllers, claims, and analyzers, so it will support different types of protocols.

We just created load scenarios and we will load the scenarios to a number of virtual users. For example, we can load around 1,000 users for each scenario. In abnormal conditions, we could have 10,000 users. Also, loading them depends upon the role alias and role controller's configuration.

The size of staff required for deployment and maintenance depends upon what application and how many load scenarios you want to do, as well as the complexity of your application, how much hardware you have, and how much software support you have. All of those things will come into the picture.

They would be different types of users like a read-only user, a write-only user, etc.

We use JMeter and LoadRunner together: When we're stress testing and for service or load testing we use JMeter, while we use LoadRunner for basic load testing. We keep it like that but we can see how that mitigation works and the application is also for internal users, so we consider what it does there and we can do a lot of those things.

We are not actually concerned with the technical support of the LoadRunner. We get support for the LoadRunner through the internet.

We previously used JMeter.

The initial setup is not that difficult. When it comes to distribution systems then it will be somewhat difficult, and you need to have a proper network to work on. Another consideration is that at the distribution level and onward we need to put different controllers, unions, and claims at different locations to have a product as accurate as this.

The deployment took some time because we needed to know what type of load is expected in the future and what the break-even point would be, at which point of load. We needed to know the different scenarios that were expected and plan the load testing and the load batterings and always stick to the plan. We needed load analysis, a load plan, and benchmarking standards. All of these need to be collected. This equipment needs to be connected before we can actually begin testing.

The deployment takes around one month man days based on the application status.

We used a consultant for deployment.

We did some return on investment analysis, by using the POC (proof of concept). We compared other tools with LoadRunner, JMeter, and LoadRunner and we got a generated a scenario testing based on the place of publication and we determined that LoadRunner is good.

I don't know the licensing cost, but I think that you would get a discount for normal usage. I think there are different yearly options for different types of usage. It is not only how many users, but also whether it is shareable or not and other criteria involved in each feature. There are additional fees for the users and hardware linked to the processing.

We evaluated JMeter and LoadRunner together to form the selection process. For some scenarios we can use LoadRunner for specification road testing, while for other types of testing we prefer JMeter.

When you compare other products to LoadRunner, LoadRunner has been in the market for a long time. You could use it to integrate with everything. Also, it can generate an input that we can use in any version, it can improve our performance, and we can put input in and we get a command from LoadRunner for that.

Our primary use case for this solution is across many environments and many applications.

It provides clients with an understanding of application and system performance.

Real-time performance stats, analysis tool, protocol coverage, and simple integration of external monitors are the most valuable features. 

Support for Microsoft Dynamics needs improvement.

Our primary use case for LoadRunner is a lot of business transactions, physical scenarios, and incoming applications. We use LoadRunner for building and it is very easy to use because of its support for all of the protocols. 

LoadRunner is a very systematic tool for anyone to use. Even someone who is actually a first time user of LoadRunner can actually get a lot of benefit out of the tool.

LoadRunner is an expensive tool, so mostly it is large-sized companies that would prefer LoadRunner over other legacy applications. Being with LoadRunner for so long has given a lot of opportunities for us to experiment with large workloads and even the various different types of extensions. That has actually really benefited the organization.

One of the most valuable features of LoadRunner is the correlation feature which is automated now. All year when I started this with a lot of manual processes, it would actually capture dynamic values, but now these new versions have made it very easy for any newcomer to form whatever you want.

Get in other agitation settings which are very detailed and any tester can go through everything they intend to do, customize their execution patterns. The results are very detailed, presenting a very comprehensive summary that anyone can read and understand.

If they can make LoadRunner more comprehensive, it would really help. My main recommendations for improvement for LoadRunner are:

• It would be good if LoadRunner can categorize the different transactions based on the time taken to do the test, against the transactions first.
• The reports should be a little more comprehensive, more detailed.
• There should be a way to use the default monitoring tool integrated with LoadRunner.

For example, if I have to look for monitoring I have to always integrate an extending tool to LoadRunner and then monitor my task. If LoadRunner is not driving and they can afford to have their own monitoring enabled, that would help.

The LoadRunner report also needs more information other than the straightforward notes, like response time.

To be frank, the earlier version (graded I-5 and graded I-6) was very bad for me. I had a really bad experience on that version. 

One of the problems we had was that one of the scripts that we used to create worked and then there were some bugs that were coming out runtime support. 

The recent version runs well, and actually, LoadRunner has removed those bugs. It's been a good experience.

In terms of driving, LoadRunner is at a level that is a little riddled but otherwise, it's been a good thing. LoadRunner has the kind of features that are much more advanced. The comparison is IIS & NeoLoad. It is very scalable.

Very rarely have I actually wondered how to use tech support because most of the bugs, most of the issues have been resolved by ourselves, through online browsing and materials. I've not really chatted with the LoadRunner tech support.

The setup of LoadRunner is very straightforward. It comes with one retro file which installs all the applications which handle the individual applications also. It's a very easy setup, just that the sizing of the tools is much less. Other than that, the setup is pretty easy.

The three factors we look for in a vendor are: 

1. The pricing 
2. The features
3. The customer support

Definitely, the features are most important to complement the pricing.

Since it's 11 years that the company has been using LoadRunner, there was no other tool on the market that would actually come to the standards of LoadRunner and that is why we had chosen such a tool. 

Look at the options on other software which are not as pricey as LoadRunner. It's true that LoadRunner has all the features and a lot of ways to help, but then not all companies require such extensive tools. That is where I would probably suggest asking the pricing and the features integrated.

At that time it was Silk Performer vs. LoadRunner, and Silk Performer was not optimal enough in terms of its features. We were having a lot of issues trying to create our scripts using Silk Performer and latched upon LoadRunner. We found out that LoadRunner has got a lot more features than Silk Performer and was able to cover the tasks.

I would give LoadRunner around 8 out of 10 in the review, considering the fact, that I know how good the tool is. There are a few areas for improvement, the results, and the monitoring tools. Other than that, I think I'm pretty satisfied with LoadRunner.

Enables us to test most of the products and projects that we have across all the different technologies, without having to look at other tools.

It allows us to get better reliability, quicker, for the products and solutions. That means fewer critical performance issues when the product goes to market. 

Probably integrations. We still have some issues with integration with things like SiteScope which, obviously, being another HPE product should be very straightforward, but there are always issues around that.

We would like to see more integrations and easier integrations. We have other products that we have integrations with, other third-party products, which seem to be straightforward, ALM and JIRA for example. But for integration between HPE products, we would like to see that go a bit more smoothly.

About 12 years.

it's stable. It's been around for a long time. There are no real issues, no defects or anything.

Scalability is good. There are lots of different options ranging from the freely available versions through to Enterprise and Performance Center. And obviously features like StormRunner Load allow you to scale more quickly and effectively.

We've used technical support quite a lot but not so much lately because it's something we're very familiar with, so we tend to manage it. But when we've used it we've been happy with it.

It was a very long time ago. It was complicated only because of the age of the technology then and the infrastructure we had.

Updating, it's something you just have to plan for, but otherwise it was fairly straightforward.

There are various things we haven't been able to test so we're continuously looking at other vendors to complement it. NeoLoad being one, recently. That's it really.

It covers the most technology, is the most reliable, it gives us the most features.

It's not a 10 out of 10 because of the issues with integrations and it's not quite the one solution, the one-part solution for everything.

I don't know if it's really the product's fault but there are products that, later on, I can't test or can't script against or can't replay against and it's just understanding whether that's a limitation of the tool or a limitation of the product. Part that is design as well as trying to actually script against it.

LoadRunner is one of the most versatile performance testing tools. One thing I really like about LoadRunner is its breadth of coverage. The number of protocols that it supports, and especially, for example, when it talks about SAP GUI-based performance testing. I could not think about any other tool other than LoadRunner. I've also seen LoadRunner evolve over a period of time, in the sense that it addresses new technologies. I would say it's still a very strong product and there's a lot of new products out there.

Think about the performance testing as a part of the whole of your testing lifecycle. It's our go-to product and that's the only product which we use within the organization right now. Not every project goes through performance testing, but any project that has performance testing is a component of the test lifecycle. It has our de facto standard.

When you think about deploying these applications to production, and our organization being a global company, we have a user footprint across the globe. LoadRunner, along with HPE Envy Network Virtualization: It's a combination where we, not only run business processes in volumes, but also similar to these network conditions, helps us identify some performance issues well in advance. It's one of those risk verifications that we do.

One thing I was desiring a few years ago, before StormRunner came in, I was hoping HPE would come out with some of the new tools that are cloud-based, SAS-based performance testing solutions. With StormRunner coming out, it has probably filled that gap.

You should be able to use LoadRunner as a single platform. You should be able to have browser based access. You should be able to run enterprise tests. HPE addressed a little bit of this by taking over the license for the controller and tying it to the load generators. But in an ideal world, just make it a single platform, everything should be like Performance Center.

I've been using LoadRunner as a performance engineer since 2002. That makes it about 15 years now.

It's such a mature product. It's been out there for a very long time. It has come a long way. It's extremely stable in the sense that I can approach the technical support, as an example. It is because we ran into some challenges with program scripting or something, but generally not because of the application crashing. I'd list my experience with LoadRunner as it being a very stable product.

In my previous experience with previous employers working with some retailers, we had to run some extremely large tests, and even at my current company, we go up to about 3000 content users. I think it's fairly scalable. We run very small tests, obviously, with StormRunner. It's can probably scale to much higher levels, but within our boundaries of demands, it's scaled very well.

We use tech support, but not quite often, just when we really run into some problems. We have a really strong internal team, which so a majority of the issues are internally solved. We are either experimenting or knowledge base in everything. We do reach out to tech support, but it's very rarely done (rare cases).

Service depends upon the issue we face. Sometimes we go off on a tangent. It's an exception, but we go down the wrong path. Then, it's a long winding road to the actual resolution. In many cases, if it's a common issue and it's fairly quick, we get pretty good support. I've actually seen both.

In 2002, was the first time I was actually really involved in bringing the tool in. Ever since, I go to new employers, the tool was already there. I help take it to the next level, mature the practice of what not, but again there's only one instance where I really had to bring the tool in, but everywhere else, we already had a tool in place.

Back then, there was no competition. It was the only choice there. After that, whenever I moved companies, the tool was already there. I was involved in the sense of bringing new protocols, new additional licenses, and so on.

I was involved in the initial setup. It's extremely straightforward. I've probably worked on about six or seven different versions, and it's extremely straightforward and fairly simple to setup.

I would still consider LoadRunner as an expensive tool and you get a LoadRunner and the Performance Center.

Once there was situation before StormRunner was out, where we did venture into a tool call. Here I was working for a retailer. We ventured in tool call with SOASTA. We were looking for a cloud-based performance testing solution, and at that time, HPE was not there. Every time I wanted to make a decision, LoadRunner was our default choice and we had nothing else running in contention.

LoadRunner is still my first choice. There's still no competition to LoadRunner. In the sense, there are tools out there. I know without a doubt, very good tools. But again, LoadRunner to me is more versatile and has more breadth of coverage.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• We look at the product itself. In the sense, the stability of the product, etc.
• In terms of the vendor, we look at the thought leadership and the roadmap. That's something we always look into. Just to see, is the vendor a good investment. For example, are they going to stick around for a long time?
• We want them to innovate. In the sense, if you think about how quickly the technologies are changing. We want the vendor that we are looking into to focus on innovation.

The ability to do multithreading. That's available in any performance testing tool, but the number of protocols that this particular tool supports has been very good. The support and the stability of those protocols are amazing. That's why I like LoadRunner.

We use it as a performance testing tool. Obviously, performance testing helps with improving your application's performance, maintaining the stability, and the availability of systems. It's very easy to use. Sometimes, in very rare cases, we also use it for functional testing.

I would like to see the Internet protocols come into LoadRunner because that's the future. Most organizations are going to be heading that way, so I would love to see that added.

If the support of the protocols was the same throughout the other protocols and it was there evenly, then I would rate the product higher.

The stability: It's the best part of the LoadRunner platform.

It's highly scalable. LoadRunner can connect to any number of agents, and you can have multiple controllers, which is obviously a different licensing model.

We have used the tech support. There are multiple levels of it. Most of our tickets get resolved at the very first layer. Very rarely do we have to escalate the tickets to the R&D, but that hasn't been very often. The product has been working well.

We had to promote performance testing at some clients because they weren't doing anything at all. That was one use case. The second use case was they were developing some other tools, and coming from a stability standpoint and also from a quality pedigree standpoint, LoadRunner stands out. It's very easy to find resources, so it all adds up.

We ended up with LoadRunner because it has a big market share. Our company has been using LoadRunner for over 11 years, although we have used other products as well. But in terms of stability of the product and ease of finding resources, ultimately it comes down to the resources. The clients are going to be the ones using the tool. You're not going to find a lot of resources with the other company performance testing tools and resources are very low on the open source tools, so that's why we pitched LoadRunner.

I have been involved with the initial setup at multiple organizations. Because we are a consulting firm, we go and talk to different bigger organizations and we do their setups as well.

The setup of LoadRunner itself is very straightforward. It's just that different clients provide different hardwares, and that's the hardest part.

Yes, because our clients wanted us to consider other solutions, and that's fair enough. You cannot be biased just on one tool, so yes, we did propose some open source tools as well some licensed tools as well, along with LoadRunner.

Other solutions considered:

• Cecilia, which is primarily a research installation tool, but it also has performance ability.
• JMeter, on the open source front
• LoadUI, from SmartBear
• IBM Green Hat
• Parasoft

Don't make a blind decision. Don't just say, "Pick LoadRunner, because we are telling you to."

Look at the other solutions as well. I'm pretty sure they will soon enough determine that Loadrunner is the market leader, and there is a good reason for it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Our company looks for the region and their attention to consider our recommendations in terms of which tools to buy, how to go about testing, and how to avoid testing. You don't want to test too much, as well. These are some of the things. If we get any hints on whether the management is more inclined to work with us. That's what we look for.

The capabilities and flexibility of the Controller, the ability to monitor the systems under test, and the comprehensive results Analysis which saves a great deal of time.

More guidance on the use of the Tru Client protocol which is used for Web interfaces.

15 years

LoadRunner generally deploys without issues.

Its a complex product and there are usually a few bugs in the point zero releases, it is generally pretty reliable.

Sometimes the controller can crash, this is usually after opening and closing several scenarios without closing the controller. Closing the controller after a couple of scenarios opened will avoid the problem.

Scalability is great, I have personally used LoadRunner with up to 72,000 virtual users, and 35 load generators.

I don't have recent experience with HPE customer service.

I don't have recent experience with HPE tech support.

I started performance testing with LoadRunner and I'm still using it. I have used other tools, but its the best all rounder.

Initial setup is straightforward as LoadRunner is pretty much standalone and just needs connectivity to the system under test.

I generally implement it myself.

The cost depends greatly on the needs of the testing engagement.

The free community licence (permanent for 50 VUsers) available from Version 12 is very useful. For small tests this is sufficient and there is no licence cost to use it.

The community licence is excellent for training as well, you get full functionality for as long as you like.

No

Take a good look at your requirements, LoadRunner is the best for those who need a full blown product, or a diverse range of protocols to be tested. However not everyone needs this. There are other products that do parts of what LoadRunner does just as well and cheaper. Because LoadRunner is so widely used, there are many people with LoadRunner experience available, it will be harder to find experience in an alternative tool. There are cheaper and free alternatives, but these generally take longer to set up and use. Often the software licence costs are far less than the professional services cost for a performance testing engagement. The higher cost of a LoadRunner licence will be offset by time saved by using it.

• Auto Correlation: It saves time while designing the performance testing scripts.

• Extended Reporting: It saves time in report designing and also, provides the option to select the quantum of information to represent.

I have performed performance testing for a number of clients using HPE LoadRunner. It has helped them in finding the performance bottlenecks, capacity issues before deployment.

The extended features are available but the high pricing is an issue.

I am using HPE LoadRunner for six years.

I have found some stability issues for one of the website. After a number of concurrent users, the web server was unable to handle the load.

I have experienced scalability issues.

HPE provides excellent technical support. The process is lengthy and time- consuming, but the quality is excellent.

I have used Apache JMeter too, but it supports limited protocols. HPE LoadRunner's protocol support is wide.

The initial setup is easy; HPE Documentation is one of the biggest benefits.

The price is a bit high but if you procure the HPE LoadRunner you will get many benefits such as excellent technical support, a wide range of supported protocols, a great document library and easy help from the technical communities for your problems.

We evaluated Apache JMeter.

I will suggest to first understand what is your requirement and then list down the tools available, which can help in delivery. We need to make an appropriate choice by keeping the budget in mind. If pricing is not an issue then choose LoadRunner, else evaluate other options.