Recovering Prematured LoadRunner Test results

12 August 2009

Recovering Loadrunner Test results after LR Controller box crashed or scenario terminated prematurely
DC/ SC/ Geo/Practice: Victoria Park STP, Kolkata Name of the project: Siebel Performance Testing Name of the author: Arun Kumar Pal Date Created: 1st July 2009

12 August 2009

Description
In order to scale its business to keep pace with market growth, BT Global Service has decided to automate the process used to manage orders for its global data communications services, and deployed "Wizard," an order management system powered by Oracle's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. Role of TCS in this context is to assess performance from a user experience, capacity and scalability perspective. The scope of work entails defining the test strategy, modeling and automating the business processes that impact potential bottleneck components on the Siebel Enterprise under varying load conditions, simulating different scenarios representative of the Live environment. To incorporate the client request through automation, we need QTP as a single user functional based UI testing tool as well as Loadrunner as single\multiple user performance based server request and response mode testing tool.

12 August 2009

How we did it
Process adopted We had to run a long running soak test during the weekend for more than 60 hours or so. During the load test (after 45 hours or so) the scenario was terminated due to problem on the controller box. As the scenario was terminated prematurely the test results was corrupted and it was not collated. We need the test results ( till the point, scenario terminated).

12 August 2009

Why this is a best practice

Justification
Issues faced: Were unable to collate the load test results on very first day of week after the soak test completes. Found the test results are not collating and throwing error. The results were very much important for our reporting purpose. Nothing were opening. Found that the scenario was terminated during the soak test and thats why the test results were not collated. So the main reason was immature termination of Load Test Scenario. This may happen whenever the LR scenarios are terminated prematurely or controller crashed during the load test causing Result collation problems.

12 August 2009

Solutions
If a load test completes or is stopped either manually or because of some failure during the test, but the result collation process fails, is it possible to recover the result data? Yes, it's possible to manually collate the test data and recover the complete test results including the system resource utilization details of the test scenario.

Process 1: First, try the Collate option: Controller -> Results -> Collate Results.

12 August 2009

Solutions
If Process 1 fails, then, Process 2: 1. On the controller machine, go to Result -> Results setting to verify the result location. 2. Navigate to the result directory on the controller. 3. Locate the file named remote_results.txt and open it in any word editor. This will help in cases that the result files ( *.eve) contains useful data but the Controller did not manage to write to the lrr that it has the data. FullData will be zero in this case. Setting it to 1 will enable you to view what data was saved. If the result still failed to come up, it is very likely that the t_rep.eve file in the controller is not completely generated.
Continued ..P8

12 August 2009

Solutions
Process 2 Continued 4. On remote_results.txt, you will see the location of the .eve file on remote host. e.g. MyHost=c:\temp\brr1\netdir\test\myhost_1.eve 5. Go to that specific host, and copy of the .eve file to the controller machine's result directory. 6. Open the Result file ( .lrr) in Analysis . If the scenario crashed, or ended prematurely then set "FullData=1" in the lrr file of the result folder: 1. Open the Result file ( .lrr) in notepad 2. Search for the [Data Collection] section 3. Create/modify the value or FullData to 1 Example: [Data Collection] FullData=1

12 August 2009

Solutions
Process 3: In order to save what can be saved, run the scenario again, for a short interval(5 minutes) saving the results in a folder different than the old results folder. The _t_rep.eve file and the .lrr file in the new result directory need to be edited. In the _t_rep.eve file there is a line (first one) which maybe something like this: "28 11 1018300521 2 4627103 22735576 5481115" The 11 is the event code for start scenario. The 1018300521 is the start time and it needs to be moved backward to match the beginning of the first load test. The same must be done for the scenario start time specified in the .lrr file. For example, [Scenario] Start_time=1018300521 Put here the same number.
Continued ..P10

12 August 2009

Solutions
Process 3 Continued After this replace the binary eve files (.eve or .gzl) from the new load test result with the ones collected from the Load Generators resulted from old scenario run. Back up the data folder in the new results directory. Copy the data folder from the old results directory in the new results directory. Now the results can be analyzed. If the exact time of start of the first load test is not known. Select any start time that will definitely fall before the estimated start time of the original scenario. e.g., say 10000 seconds less than the one in the new load test. Make a few iteration until you find out what exactly was the first event's time.
Continued ..P11

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Solutions
Process 3 Continued
Note: The duration of scenario in the new result will not be accurate. It is advised not to overwrite the old result directory in these cases since it consists of the summary data and the monitoring data created even before collation.

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How this may be adapted elsewhere

Replication Please make sure that there are enough memory space on the drive you have installed LoadRunner as well as on the drive where the test results are stored. Please execute the load tests with Standard Log. Sometimes its necessary to run formal load tests with Extended log (parameter substitution). That time please make sure that the drive of results directory has enough free space to store the logs. Please make sure no restart or logoff will be made on the LR controller box, if the LR controller is Virtualized box.Also to prevent from crashing please do not use the same machine as Load Controller as well as Load Generator. Contact Info Name: Arun Kumar Pal Email: arunkumar.pal@tcs.com Phone: +91 33 66364365

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