Visual Studio Test Load Agent Brain Dump

On my current project, I’m doing a lot with performance testing using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Test Load Agent.  Now, there’s not a whole lot of things on Microsoft’s site about it, and blog postings are fairly sparse too.  Hopefully some small nuggets listed here will be beneficial.

The first thing to note is that there is some documentation for 2005, but very little about the 2008 version.  Do not use the 2005 version if possible.  It has many blocking issues you probably will encounter.  Use 2008 as many have been fixed.  Many of the guides below are for 2005, but work just as well for 2008.

Installation:

  • Installation Guide for VS Test Load Agent
  • Firewall Visios

Configuration:

  • Misc Good Configuration”
  • In the installation documentation, it talks about if you have a domain or workgroup.  However, in many test scenarios you will have multiple domains with no trusts in place (i.e. controller sits in one domain while the machines to be tested and monitor sit in another).  Don’t panic.  Simply create the Controller service account with the same username and password in all the domains.  Make the Controller service account a member of the Performance Log Users and Performance Monitor Users groups, and it will do synchronized pass-though.

How-To’s and Walkthroughs:

FAQs and Indexes:

  • MSDN Forum FAQ
  • Ed Glas’s Content Index

Hopefully those links will help people.  This is usually the set of links I send people who are knew to the whole Visual Studio Load Test Agent stuff.