DeNamik releases the free LoadGen 1.1

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Daniel Nikolic has just released version 1.1 of his LoadGen tool. This tool is completely free for simulating loads of up to 150 users per server. The idea behind LoadGen is that it is a dirt-simple tool that can run and manage user simulation scripts against Citrix, Provision Networks, or Terminal Server server-based computing environments.
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Written by:
Brian Madden
Publication Date:
March 28, 2007
Doc #Id: 687


Daniel Nikolic has just released version 1.1 of their LoadGen tool. This tool is completely free for simulating loads of up to 150 users per server. (You can buy licenses for more users if you want to go higher than that.) The idea behind LoadGen is that it is a dirt-simple tool that can run and manage user simulation scripts against Citrix, Provision Networks, or Terminal Server server-based computing environments.

Tim Mangan wrote an in-depth review of an early version of this product almost a year ago. The product was released shortly thereafter, and now this version 1.1 update adds several new features, including:

  • Native RDP support
  • Native Provision Networks support
  • Vista LoadBot Support
  • More control of the individual client LoadBots
  • Major simplification of the freeware licensing and activation
  • Support for .NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0
  • An online check for updates;
  • Dozens of minor usability improvements and bugfixes

The user load simulation space is starting to heat up after almost ten years of stagnation with one of the only affordable / free products being the Citrix Server Test Kit (CSTK). Citrix recently bought a company called thinGenius for their TLoad load testing tool. LoadGen is similar to TLoad in the tests that it can simulate and the way it simulates tests, although TLoad has some better reporting capabilities. Time will tell how these two tools will shake out.

Reader Comments
Scripting stuff.
Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:46:13 AM
Everyone I have spoke to regarding Denamik all say the same. They stopped looking at it when they found out you have to write scripts yourself. The ThinGenius stuff is great, you just hit record and it creates the script for you. The downside is it only does Citrix, not RDP. I was interested to see this new Loadgen from Denamik also supports RDP. On his homepage he also lists four automated scripting tools that can be used to create the scripts Wintask, Winbatch, Auto-it, script-it. A decent load test to test an application such as office would require several scripts emulating what a user does for at least 20 minutes so automating the script is a must for me. Wintask was the only one that mentioned RDP support so I thought i'd try them for creating the script. Creating the script without using rdp was easy, when you try and do it with rdp it just doesn't seem to work. Luckily their online support is excelent and the Wintask staff were on my PC trying to create a simple script to open a RDP session, open up notepad and type "testing" within minutes. About three hours later we were at the open notepad stage. They basically gave up and said it can't be done using RDP. I don't have the knowledge or the notion to write several 20 minute scripts in VB or any other language so I was just wondering how anyone else has managed to use this for testing an application? Am I missing something somewhere?
 
John
http://www.johnkellett.co.uk 
Re: Scripting stuff.
Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:40:01 AM

Guest

Hi John,

I might be off the mark with this - but I'm using Remote Desktop Connection with Wintask and I thought the following might be useful.

1) Ensure that the remote connection window accepts windows commands (one of the settings) not just in full screen mode - this way you can drive in commands using the sendkey command.

2) http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000570.html This link provides very useful keystroke commands for the remote connection - might be of use

 3) I start notepad by using the windows security manager, then the task manager, the you can call an instance of notepad

Maybe this might help:

 'Start up the remote desktop connection:
Shell("mstsc.exe",1)
UseWindow("MSTSC.EXE|Edit|Remote Desktop Connection|1",1)
 SendKeys(RemoteServer$) 'Because we have added the <Enter> key the Remote name system will connect -no button press required.

UseWindow("MSTSC.EXE|IHWindowClass|Input Capture Window",1)
 pause 1 sec 'Wait a bit to allow the machines to catch up!
 SendKeys(Password$)
 SendKeys("<Shift <Tab>>")
 SendKeys(UserName$)
 Pause 1 sec 'Wait a bit to allow the machines to catch up!
 SendKeys("<Enter>")
 Pause 5 sec 'Let the remote machine startup (adjust as required)

UseWindow("MSTSC.EXE|IHWindowClass|Input Capture Window",1)
 sendkeys("<Ctrl <Alt <End>>>")  'This starts the windows security menu
 SendKeys("<Alt t>")'Access the task manager
UseWindow("MSTSC.EXE|IHWindowClass|Input Capture Window",1)
 SendKeys("<Alt n>notepad<Enter>")
 pause 1 second 'let the application start up
 SendKeys("test materials here!<Enter>")
 SendKeys("<Enter>")
 SendKeys("<Enter>") 

 

 

RE: Scripting stuff.
Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:06:54 PM
Hi John,
 
DeNamiK is working on a free add-on to LoadGen to record user activity and save that as an AutoIT script. This would make creating user test scripts a piece of cake. And this would or course also work on RDP. You could ping Daniel if you would like to know about this.
 
Regards,
Michel Roth.
Thincomputing.net
RE: Scripting stuff.
Friday, March 30, 2007 6:36:21 AM
Hi Michel
 
Thanks for the info, I will look forward to seeing that.
 
John
 
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