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Using Two or More Load Generators with LoadRunner

LoadRunner is a suite of applications designed specifically for performance testing of computer systems.

Put at a very high level, LoadRunner is used to throw load (or Virtual Users in LoadRunner terms) at a system to check for performance counters such as throughput, CPU per transaction etc. LoadRunner supports a variety of different architectures including Web, ERP, CRM and more.

This article details the steps of how to set-up multiple load generators to work with your LoadRunner Controller environment.

There are several drivers for going with this approach:

  • Your load generator may actually sit on the same box as your Controller (design flaw)
  • Your load generator may be a low spec box which maxes out at X number of VUsers
  • You want load to hit the target from multiple machines to introduce threading.
  • etc

Set-up

It’s a pretty straight forward procedure; unfortunately I couldn’t find any decent content on the web to actually guide me through this process or anything that detailed what needed to be done to actually get the load generators set-up.
At first, I thought LoadRunner came equipped with some sort of ‘agent’ that could be deployed to a server and set it self up as a service which would then talk to the Controller; however this did not seem the case and it turned out that the software actually needed to be installed on the target machine.

Requirements

  • LoadRunner installer – preferably the same version as any existing versions of LoadRunner you may have installed on other machines

Install

  • Launch the setup.exe on the machine you want to set-up as a load generator
  • Install with the ‘Custom‘ option – deselect all the options that relate to the Controller (we only want to install as a load-generator so we don’t want any Controller components lingering about)
  • After installing, you may be asked for some configuration input, such as your username and password
  • On the Controller, click on ‘Scenario’ –> ‘Load Generators…
  • Here, simply enter the name of the box we just set-up as a load generator.
  • Click ‘Connect’

Troubleshooting

  • If the Controller cannot connect to the load-generator – check your firewall settings
  • Also click the ‘Details…’ button to double check that every thing is in order there

Notes

This was tried and tested on LoadRunner 8 and 8.1. I expect the procedure to be similar on later versions but I cannot guarantee that.

4 replies on “Using Two or More Load Generators with LoadRunner”

Hi

Is load Generator a free to install Component?
Can i install it on Many machines even if i dont have any License?

I am upgrading LRv9 to LRv11.. Do i need to Upgrade my Load Generaotors as well?
Thanks in Advance.

Hello Alok,
I think you are free to install the Load Generator/Injector component on as many machines as you want but please do not take my word for it. You are better of checking the license agreement to double check.
If you are upgrading your controller from v9 to v11 then I would recommend updating your generators to v11 too; simply for the sake of compatibility and ruling out any potential issues which may be caused by conflicting versions.

Hi mikail,
I was able to connect to load generator, but during execution the remote machine was not not able to generate load.I even checked the firewall

Let me know if i missed any config…

thanks in advance.

Hi Nani,
Have you tried another script by any chance or does this happen with all scripts?
Can you set-up another load generator to test with?
Can you ping the generator from the controller and vice versa?

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