OpenText Enterprise Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Enterprise) Reviews

Performance Center is actually run by a performance engineering group so in every release you have a performance engineering phase that runs at the same time as UAT. That's pretty much used to ensure that we're going to hit our production stability, scalability, etc., when a product finally goes in.

That is used in a phase gate, it's not continually run. That's one of the things we're eventually going to get to, that you continually run it.

Our performance engineering team has feedback on Performance Center, so they don't utilize as many of the features as they should. They have it, part of it could be training, but they're not using it as much as they should. They use it, but they're not taking full advantage of all the features in it, meaning they are not combining it with UFT, etc.

They just run it to run the virtual users and then load and stress test, and that's pretty much what they're doing. They're not really taking advantage of the whole stack like we do. That's another group as well.

Stable in the fact that it does what it does, it does it well. Why they use other tools, that's where I would say there's some poly-functionality that has to be improved in the product. I'd have to specifically interrogate them on what they're not getting out of it. It's stable, it's up, and it runs, but if you want to look at is it as highly leveraged as it could be, it's not so much.

We're already at enterprise scale, so it's used across the enterprise. I would say that we're at that point.

Originally we were using LoadRunner, and then we had to upgrade to Performance Center because with LoadRunner we didn't maintain currency with the license. That's another group that manages that. They just kind of were using it as it is. Then when we upgraded to version 11, we had compatibility issues and we had to go to Performance Center. I think they just didn't get used to it. I don't know exactly what they are or are not using in that stack, but part of it is we were forced to upgrade.

I have an entire team, so I'm a director and I have an entire tools team that does that. I did get involved in the planning and the strategy of how we're going to do it. My team said that first installation is relatively easy. When we go to upgrade and migrate, that's where there's pain.

We have to use other products like Selenium and a lot of custom scripting, et cetera, but that's the nature of the business. That ends up happening everywhere.

Have a well-defined process, have a strong reporting structure, meaning in your process you want a lot of measurability. If you define your output, the reports and the questions you need to answer from what you're doing, which your process should be managing for you. In our company, we are very specific about what our executives and stakeholders want.

We have a very well-defined set of measurements that we have to take. We then put a process designed to ensure those measurements are always taken. That then allows you to deal with your outputs and your reporting structure, which then allows you to properly architect your tooling. The technology is very flexible. You have to decide as a client area how you really want to use it and that's going to start with what your business needs are the values that you're trying to get out of it.

That's the biggest advice that I have, it's not even on the technology. The technology will do great things for you if you have a plan and a structure and you know what you want it to do for you. Half the time they don't know, they want the tool to do it for them and it's the other way around. So that's what I advise people to do.

Think about it, have a vision, have a plan, tie that to outcomes, and measure those outcomes. If you're answering the right questions and asking the right questions, your technology will really enable you. You've got to look at it from that standpoint.

We still have a legacy LoadRunner, but we are moving towards this tool. For our web applications, we are moving towards Performance Center, because it is more GUI and user-friendly, and with all the latest technologies. It's pretty easy to learn how to use.

I don't know if it is available or it depends on the licenses, but reports from Performance Center need to be improved. If we can improve the reporting structure and we can view the report on a smartphone, that would be huge.

We always have to get connected if there is a report. It's doesn't need to be the full tool, but just like how HPE Discover has an app, if we can have an app just for reports, that would help.

I've been using it for about six to eight months.

We are still learning and evaluating it.

All of our applications are not yet on Performance Center.

It was even before I joined. We were using LoadRunner. LoadRunner is a leading load testing tool in the market. Whenever a customer or anyone looks for a tool, the first thing which comes to mind is HP. We have seen StormRunner and we are here at HPE Discover 2016 to check out tools. We will see how they scale, and probably will make a decision soon.

Nothing wrong with it, but I have to learn more about it to see if it's going to match our needs. Performance Center has everything which LoadRunner offers, plus additional things.

Initially, I've been using it for small use cases, just to test scenarios of less than 1,000 users. I think generally it's been very good. My team has even deployed it for clients within banking. It's still a go-to tool; although, as far as SaaS goes, recently we have had more suggestions to go with Neosyde. 

I think the number one feature everybody likes is the capability to easily generate virtual users as well as the reporting. Recently, we are starting to look at things more from the diagnostic perspective as well as from the troubleshooting perspective. It gives us many more options for troubleshooting and presenting reports. The other reason why LoadRunner is quite popular for us is that it has a long track record. We know if we need to look for a solution we can still search and find a use case or a solution quite easily.

I like the new pricing model. It helps us to ramp up much better, especially when we were trying to use this for SaaS applications. They have a much more practical pricing model now. It allows us to break it down smaller and also build-up towards a price model that works for the client. I think that was a big bottleneck in the past — now it looks much better.

From a technical perspective, LoadRunner has always been good. You can trust that it can deliver. The big bottleneck in the past has always been the pricing model. Now, with the new approach, with the use of SaaS, we are currently in proposals to recommend LoadRunner as a solution for one of our government clients. We are doing an implementation there. 

I think LoadRunner is still getting into grips with me — maybe, I've not used it that much. It's not that popular on the cloud. Also, we have not tried this on mobile platforms with mobile virtual users.

I have used LoadRunner for quite some time — roughly 10 years.

Both the scalability and stability are strong points for LoadRunner. We have no complaints so far. Of course, there's always this concern around if we have sufficient use on the hardware to create the required scale for the number of users, but I think that's easy to workaround. This is what enterprise users do; we don't really have that much of a complaint there.

We work quite closely with the local team in Malaysia — they do their job.

Generally, the initial setup has not been much of a problem. If you have some level of intermediate knowledge on networks as well as some quick training on LoadRunner, you should be able to set it up within a week or two.

Proper training is important. If you have teams that want to use the product, you need to ensure that they go through the right training. Get your guys to sit through the LoadRunner training or get someone experienced to train them.

Make sure that your team trains before they go and apply the system because LoadRunner is not actually something that you do, plug-and-play. You do need a little bit of configuration, and it's not for beginners. It is meant for people with at least an intermediate understanding of networks, and an intermediate understanding of performance application — you need to have that. I would say it's always important to ensure that you work very closely with the development team. To get the best out of the tool, you need to have a solid collaboration. When you want to troubleshoot, you want to review or uncover the performance issues; you need to make sure that you work quite closely with the development teams as well.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give LoadRunner a rating of eight. We have not used it for global distributed testing, and we also don't know its full capability from a mobile perspective. That's an area that I cannot comment on yet, so I'm reserving my judgment on that. That's the reason why I am giving it an eight.

From my perspective, there's still a gap in terms of the area that LoadRunner is being marketed to. Its biggest strength, in my opinion, is the reporting. If they could keep the reporting, but give it a lighter engine to generate virtual users, that would be perfect. 

Probably its prime advantage, it provides a centralized location for testing.

The stability on the old versions is good. On the newer versions, I think the bleeding edge is still being worked on.

It is very scalable. No issues with scalability.

Premium support is great, but before that, when we just had general support, it was not all that great. We had issues with just trying to get support to call us back on tickets and also with the turnaround time on resolution.

It is not exactly straightforward. Their instructions were not all they could have been, but we still got it installed.

We can centralize and execute various performance tests for business units across the globe.

We are able to run performance tests for Asia, EU, and the US from a centralized controller where each team can come together in their respective time zones, build and run the tests, as a test manager can review, and suggest various improvements along with infrastructure teams.

It's expensive, so could be cheaper. Also, it should have third-party tool integration.

I've used it for two years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

We switched due to common licences.

It was straightforward.

It's expensive, but useful if the usage is across the globe; others are pay-as-you-go type license which can be used to minimize the costs.

We use the solution for performance testing, including load testing and stress and endurance testing. We have worked with Citrix, Web-HTTP/HTML, Truclient Protocols and Mobile Applications as well. It has a good user interface and is user-friendly.

It helped us to achieve our goals within the stipulated time and is a good solution for load testing. The integration was smooth, and all the help can be found in the Micro Focus help blog. The examples were helpful for new protocols and functions. 

The load testing, site scope monitoring, analysis, and graphs during execution are all useful features. It offers easy integration with third-party tools like Dynatrace, Splunk, etc. It also offers a customizable template for results. 

We'd like the product to include protocol identifiers whenever a tester wants to test a new application. They need to at least capture traffic and analyze and send a recommended protocol. 

They should give insights (passed/failed) with throughput achievable of the load test based on the throughput and errors in our previous tests without using the trend option for load tests. 

I have been working on the LoadRunner Enterprise more than four years.

Technical support is always available and ready to help.

Positive

The vendor is an expert and helps with all the setup and installation tasks.

For me, it's the fact that I can train my team on a single tool. It really is kind of our Swiss Army Knife in that it can handle so many different types of protocols and technologies, and I don't have to train my team on multiple tools to handle each of those.

It's really given us a lot of insight into, especially as we've moved into DevOps now, incorporating that into our CI lifecycle. We can start the performance testing earlier on, carry the same results through, and have it as part of our release cycle.

Mobility, I think, is the biggest for us right now. We're really getting into mobile app testing, native mobile app testing, so native Android and IOS devices.

As far as scalability goes, we're able to spin up load generators to handle an incredible size of load, so really we're just limited by the amount of hardware that we can spin up for it.

We use a third-party partner to do tech support and it's been fantastic with them.

We have, ourselves, gotten to Mircro Focus on a couple of issues that have been actually escalated all the way up to the team back in Israel, I think that's where they're located.

That was fantastic. We actually had them, they came out on site with us, some of the developers for Performance Center, and talked to us about some of the ways that we were using it. Some of the features that they thought customers no longer needed that we were actually telling them were still valuable to us, and they wound up bringing back a few features that were on the chopping block.

I wasn't directly involved in the decision to invest in Performance Center because we'd been using it since it was LoadRunner, and I've been using it for pretty close to 20 years now. So that was before my time.

I was involved in it. I'd say it was fairly straightforward for us because we used our support partner to help us out, guide us through some of the pitfalls of the initial setup. But he gave us a two-week timeframe that he said we'd be able to get it set up in, and we easily had it set up within a week.

When looking at vendors, support is the big one. Also, ease of training people on the tool, and just the variety of technology supported.

In terms of advice, I would say the biggest choice is that Performance Center really is for a very large enterprise. So I'd say evaluate if it's really what you need for the size of your organization. But if it is, it really can support pretty much any kind of technology you throw at it.

Performance Center is really our go-to tool for anything that we have to test. It's just our default tool for whatever technology we have.