RE: stress testing

Henry:

   John is partially correct. SAR, in concert with VMSTAT / IOSTAT, will provide you with a wealth of information. However, something is missing from the equation here. LoadRunner will generate scattered statistics on overall performance of an application (sorry: biased because Compuware has a better tool), but misses the mark on what other things could affect overall application performance. For example, are you doing to perform a "virgin" load test where no one is on the network and nothing but this application is running on the client? What about other traffic that would affect overall performance throughout your enterprise network? What about other applications/activities running on the client machines performing the load test. Only then will you have an effective measurement of application performance in the real world.

   If you truly have to use LoadRunner, get some software that can measure Network Performance as it relates to the load test and as it relates to general network traffic. The load test should account for other activity being performed such as email, backups, file transfers, reading of documents, etc. Otherwise, your numbers will be skewed.

  Good luck.

Thank You

Stephen P. Karniotis
Technical Alliance Manager
Compuware Corporation

Direct:	(313) 227-4350
Mobile:	(248) 408-2918
Email:	Stephen.Karniotis_at_Compuware.com 
Web:	www.compuware.com 

 -----Original Message-----
John Kanagaraj

Sent:	Friday, January 02, 2004 2:29 PM
To:	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject:	RE: stress testing

Henry,

Sar is a better tool than vmstat/iostat as it collects a broad range of information. Specifically, sar -q should show up CPU queueing and swapping, and sar -v will show up file/process table overflow issues that may occur during stress testing. IMHO, sar is quite underutilized.... ( had a paper on this last IOUG, but couldn't go and present it :(

John Kanagaraj
DB Soft Inc
Phone: 408-970-7002 (W)

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• The opinions and facts contained in this message are entirely mine and do not reflect those of my employer or customers **

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Poras, Henry R. [mailto:Henry_Poras_at_dfci.harvard.edu]
>Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 10:54 AM
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>Subject: stress testing
>
>
>We are planning on running some stress tests on a
>PeopleSoft/Oracle/Solaris
>system starting next week (using LoadRunner). I have never
>gone through a
>formalized stress test before (most of my stress is brought
>about informally).
>So far I am planning to gather statspack information, and
>periodically get
>vmstat from the OS. Is there anything else that I should
>collect? Thanks for the
>help.
>
>Henry
>
>--
>Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
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>Author: Poras, Henry R.
> INET: Henry_Poras_at_dfci.harvard.edu
>
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Author: Karniotis, Stephen
  INET: Stephen_Karniotis_at_compuware.com

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