Monitors

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LoadRunner uses a suite of integrated performance monitors.  It can be used to quickly isolate system bottlenecks with minimal impact on the system that is being tested. The suite consists of monitors for the network, application servers, web servers and database servers. These monitors are designed to accurately measure the performance of every single tier, server and component of the system.

 

 

1.1             Available Monitors

 

The following monitors are available through LoadRunner:

 

1.  Vuser Status (See Section 1.2 for more details)

2.  Transaction Monitor  (See Section 1.3 for more details)

1.  Network Latency  (See Section 1.4 for more details)

4.  Web Servers (See Section 1.5 for more details)

5.  Database Server  (See Section 1.6 for more details)

6.  Server Resources  (See Section 1.7 for more details)

 

The following sections describe these monitors as well as how to configure them.

 

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1.2       Vuser Status

 

The Vuser Status monitor displays the current state of the Vusers (i.e. READY, RUNNING).  No configuration is necessary for this monitor.  Data is captured and displayed automatically.

 

 

1.3       Transaction Monitor

 

The Transaction monitor displays the transaction rate and response time during the scenario execution.  No configuration is necessary for this monitor.  Data is captured and displayed automatically.

 

 

1.4       Network Latency

 

Network monitor can be used to determine whether the network is causing a delay. Network configuration is a primary factor in the performance of applications. A poorly designed network can slow client activity to unacceptable levels.

 

To measure network performance, the network monitor sends packets of data across the network. When a packet returns, the monitor calculates the time it takes for the packet to go to the requested node and return. This time is the delay that appears on the Network Delay graph.

 

To Configure Network Monitor:

1.       First make sure that the controller is not running any scenario.

2. In the controller window, Go to Online Monitors tab
3. Select Monitors->Offline Monitors->Network Delay from the menu
4. Check Enable network delay monitoring checkbox from Network MonitoringAdd button (See Figure 12) window and click on
5. Provide the origin address or host machine location and the destination address on the network path window (See Figure 13)
6. Click OK on network path window and on Network Monitoring window.
7. Network monitoring will start as soon as the scenario is executed.

 

Figure 12:  Network Monitor configuration window

 

Figure 13:  Setting up the origin and destination machine

 

 

1.5       Web Servers

 

LoadRunner Web server monitor is useful in isolating web server performance bottlenecks

 

 

Apache Monitor

 

In order to monitor an Apache server, it is important to know the server statistics information URL. This fixed URL enables displaying performance data from a remote client.

 

The URL should be in the following format:

http://<server_name/IP address>:port/server-status?auto (Example: http://stimpy:80/server-status?auto)

 

In order to activate the online monitor from the controller:

1.       Enter Server name or IP address of the Apache server machine (see Figure 14)

2.       Under server properties enter the port number, and URL (without server name – the default is /server-status?auto) (see Figure 15)

3.       Select counter measurement

 

Figure 14:  Apache server monitor

 

Figure 15:  Apache monitor counters

 

 

Microsoft Internet Information Server (MS IIS)

 

IIS monitor is just an addition to Windows NT Performance Monitor. In order to provide this monitor, LR simply connects to PerfMon with pre-defined web service object filtering.

 

Note: To monitor IIS from outside the firewall, TCP port 139 needs to be opened.

 

To configure an IIS Monitor:

1. Go to Online Monitor tab and highlight IIS from the Monitor tree.
2. Select Monitor->Add Online Measurements and IIS Monitor window will pop up (see Figure 16)
3. In the Monitored Server Machines section of the IIS dialog box, click Add to enter the server name or IP address of the machine to be monitored. Select the platform on which the machine runs, and click OK.
4. In the Resource Measurements section of the IIS dialog box, select the measurements.
5. Select counters and instances. The instance is relevant only if multiple instances of the highlighted counter are running (see Figure 17)
6. Click Add to place the selected counter on the resource list. Add all the desired resources to the list and then click Close.
7. Click OK in the IIS dialog box to activate the monitor.
   

Figure 16:  IIS monitor

 

Figure 17:  IIS monitor counters

 

1.6       Database Servers

 

Microsoft SQL Server Monitor

 

SQL Server monitor measures the standard NT system resources on the databse server machine.

 

Note: To monitor SQL Server from outside the firewall, TCP port 139 needs to be opened.
 

To Configure  SQL Server Monitoring:

1. Go to Online Monitor tab and highlight SQL Server from the Monitor tree.
2. Select Monitor->Add Online Measurements and SQL Server Monitor window will pop up (see Figure 18)
3. In the Monitored Server Machines section of the SQL Server dialog box, click Add to enter the server name or IP address of the machine to be monitored. Select the platform on which the machine runs, and click OK.
4. In the Resource Measurements section of the SQL Server dialog box, select the measurements.
5. Select a counter and instance. The instance is relevant only if multiple instances of the highlighted counter are running (see Figure 19)
6. Click Add to place the selected counter on the resource list. Add all the desired resources to the list and then click Close.
7. Click OK in the SQL Server dialog box to activate the monitor.

 

Figure 18:  SQL Server monitor.

 

 

Figure 19:  SQL Server counters

 

 

Oracle Monitor

 

The Oracle monitor measures information from Oracle V$ tables: Session statistics, (V$SESSTAT), and system statistics, (V$SYSSTAT). In order to view the information in the Oracle V$ tables, first set up the list of Oracle servers available to the client and configure the desired username/password/server combination.

 

Before configuring Oracle Monitor in the Controller, the following environment needs to be setup:

1. Install the Oracle client libraries on the Controller machine and make sure that the machine has database administrator privileges.
2. Ensure that the registry on the Controller machine is updated for the version of Oracle that is being used and has the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE
3. Check to see that the Oracle servers are up and running
4. Run SQL*Plus from the Controller and attempt to log in to the Oracle server(s) with the desired username/password/server combination.
5. Type SELECT * FROM V$SYSSTAT to verify that the V$SYSSTAT table on the Oracle server can be viewed. Use similar queries to verify the other tables on the server(s). Make sure that the Oracle bin directory is in the search path.

 

Note: To monitor Oracle from outside the firewall, port(s) that need to be opened depends on the configuration of Oracle Server (tnsnames.ora file)

 

To Configure Oracle Monitoring:

1. Go to the Online Monitor tab in the LoadRunnner Controller.  Highlight Oracle from the Monitor tree.
2. Select Monitor->Add Online Measurements.  The Oracle Monitor window will pop up (Figure 5e)
3. In the Monitored Server Machines section of the Oracle dialog box, click Add to enter the server name or IP address of the machine to be monitored. Select the platform on which the machine runs, and click OK.
4. In the Resource Measurements section of the Oracle dialog box, select the desired counters for the measurement. The Oracle Logon dialog box opens.
5. Enter login name, password, and Server name, and click OK. The Add Oracle Measurements dialog box opens.
6. Select an object, measurement, and instance. The instance is relevant only if multiple instances of the highlighted measurements are running. See below for suggestion on which counters are useful.
7. Click Add to place the selected measurement on the resource list. Add all the desired resources to the list and then click Close. Click OK in the Oracle dialog box to activate the monitor.

 

 

Some Metrics  from V$SYSSTAT Table

 

1. CPU used by this session

The amount of CPU time (in 10s of ms) used by a session between a user call started and ended.

2. Bytes received via SQL*Net from client

The total number of bytes received from the client over Net8

3. Logons current

The total number of current logons

4. Opens of replaced files

The total number of files that needed to be reopened because they were no longer in the process file cache.

5. User calls

The total number of user calls.

6. SQL*Net roundtrip to/from client

Total number of Net8 messages sent to and received from the client.

7. Bytes sent via SQL*Net to client

The total number of bytes sent to the client from the foreground process(es)

8. Opened cursors current

The total number of current open cursors.

9. DB block changes

The total number of changes that were made to all blocks in the SGA that were part of an update or delete operation.

10. Total file opens

The total number of file opens being performed by the instance.

 

 

1.7       Server Resources

 

Windows NT/2000

 

Windows NT/2000 measurements correspond to the built-in counters available from the NT/2000 Performance Monitor.

 

Note: To monitor a remote NT machine that does not use NT domain security, the Controller machine needs to be authenticated on the remote NT server. To authenticate the Controller machine, create an account, or change the password of the account used to log on to the Controller so that it matches the password and user name used to log on to the remote monitored NT machine. When the remote NT machine requests another machine’s resources, it sends the logged-in user name and password of the machine requesting the resources.

 

Configuring NT/2000 Server Resources:

See Configuring UNIX Server Resources Section

UNIX

Figure 20:  Unix Resources

 

 

UNIX measurements include the counters from the rstatd protocol: average load, collision rate, context switch rate, CPU utilization, incoming packets error rate, incoming packets rate, interrupt rate, outgoing packets error rate, outgoing packets rate, page-in rate, page-out rate, paging rate, swap-in rate, swap-out rate, system mode CPU utilization, and user mode CPU utilization.

 

Note: rstatd process needs to be started on all UNIX machines being monitored. Refer to UNIX man pages on how to start a rstatd process if not automatically started.

 

Table 3

 

Measurement	Description
Average load	Average number of processes simultaneously in ‘Ready’ state during the last minute.
Collision rate	Collisions per second detected on the Ethernet
Context switches rate	Number of switches between processes or threads per second
CPU utilization	Percent of time that the CPU is utilized
Disk rate	Rate of disk transfers
Incoming packets error rate	Errors per second while receiving Ethernet packets
Incoming packets rate	Incoming Ethernet packets per second
Interrupt rate	Number of device interrupts per second
Outgoing packets errors rate	Errors per second while sending Ethernet packets
Outgoing packets rate	Outgoing Ethernet packets per second
Page-in rate	Number of pages read to physical memory per second
Page-out rate	Number of pages written to pagefiles(s) and removed from physical memory per second
Paging rate	Number of pages read to physical memory or written to pagefile(s) per second
Swap-in rate	Number of processes being swapped-in to memory per second
Swap-out rate	Number of processes being swapped-out from memory per second
System mode CPU utilization	Percent of time that the CPU is utilized in system mode
User mode CPU utilization	Percent of time that the CPU is utilized in user mode

 

Configuring Server Resources Monitor for both Windows NT/2000 and UNIX:

1.       Go to Online Monitor tab and highlight Server Resources from the Monitor tree.

2.       Select Monitor->Add Online Measurements.  The Server Resources Monitor window will pop up.

3.       In the Monitored Server Machines section of the Server Resources dialog box, click Add to enter the server name or IP address of the machine to be monitored. Select the platform (Windows or UNIX) on which the machine runs, and click OK.

4.       In the Resource Measurements section of the Server Resources dialog box, select the measurements.

5.       Select a counter(s).

6.       Click Add to place the selected counter on the resource list. Add all the desired resources to the list and then click Close.

7.       Click OK in the Server Resources dialog box to activate the monitor.

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