Visual Studio 2008 Load Testing Checklist
After a couple of days of trying to run a load test for a web service on several agents via Visual Studio 2008, I come out much wiser and with a few new bald-spots, where hair I pulled out in the process used to be.
I got a few errors whose messages have nothing to do with what really happened, so here's a quick checklist:
- Try restarting the agent service.
- Re-register the agent using AgentConfigUtil and then restart the agent service.
- Try restarting the controller service.
- Are you using a trial version of Visual Studio Team System? If so, it may have expired.
- Are all of your agents and controller on the same version?
Check that the file Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.LoadTestFramework.dll is the same version on all of your computers (more information). Its original version is 9.0.21022.8, SP1's version is 9.0.30729.1. If you installed the trial from Microsoft's site, your version is pre-SP1.
If any of the agents differs from the controller, you will not be able to use them and will see them as Disconnected in the Administer Test Controllers dialog. - Are you using SQL Server as a store for the results?
- Does the user the service runs as have permissions to the SQL Server database?
You can see which user is used to access the store from Visual Studio's Menu Test -> Administer Test Controllers. - If you're getting login errors, check that the SQL Server allows remote connections. If it does, consider using a SQL Server user instead of Windows Authentication. Remember to make sure the SQL Server allows both types of connections (Mixed Mode) before attempting this.
- Make sure the computer from which the SQL Server is running has an exception for incoming connections on TCP port 1443.
- Using the trial version of the agents? Getting "The Visual Studio Team Test Load Agent license has expired" way before your 90 day trial period has elapsed? You've probably hit the 25 tests mark (note that the tests are per-CPU, rather than per-computer).
You can work around this if you change the user running the service.
Around that time I decided I've had enough with all this trial stuff. I was thinking about purchasing licenses, but then I took a look and found that you can only use load agents when you've got a Volume License!
At that point, I went and just ran the test on a few computers at once.