Load Runner Analysis: Hints ‘n’ Tips.

Setting the Granularity.

The granularity affects the graph smoothing, or number of data points. A high granularity value will reduce clutter and
improve readability, but it may hide events such as spikes. The trick is to adjust the granularity to maximize
readability but accurately represent any important events. Caution, however for larger performance tests setting the
granularity too low may cause the Analysis tool to hang for a few minutes.
 Annotations – Comments and Arrows.
Make use of comments and arrows to annotate important events on the graph. In addition, these are useful for
labelling data lines…particularly when there are lots of lines and you want to highlight just one of two of them.
 Focus on just a few transactions.
Performance tests can have sometimes hundreds of transactions and this can generate some very busy
graphs. Decide on 3-5 transactions that have the highest business value or are of particular interest…focusing
your analysis on just a few transactions is more valuable to the readers of your report.
 Set your Y-Axis to be the same for all graphs.
Graphs should be easily comparable and “tell the same story”. By default the Y-Axis is set to Automatic, which
sets the minimum and maximum scale to match your data. Go to Display Options > Advanced > Axis tab, and
change Minimum and Maximum values from “Auto” to something sensible. Percentage graphs should always
be ranges from 0% to 100%.
As a general rule, your Y-Axis scale should always start at zero and your ideal or SLA level should be
approximately one-third up the scale. People we automatically assume response times in the lower third of your
graph are “good” and the upper two-thirds are “poor”.
 Tell a Story
All graphs you present via the Analysis tool should tell a story. Performance Testing is there to answer the
question of whether the application will scale to the load level required in production…and as a performance
analysis you should produce graphs to provide evidence of either the success or failure of this performance
testing.
 Don’t Take Screenshots with the Print Screen button
Screenshots look bad, instead use Edit > Copy To Clipboard > Graph. Alternatively, you can export graphs as
image files. Go to Display Options > Advanced > Export tab. By exporting in Metafile format you will avoid any
blocky pixilation which looks great for presentations or printed reports. I also recommend setting the border
background colour to White for a nicer look (Display Options > Advanced > Chart > Panel > Background >
Color).
 Filter on Peak Load
When analyzing a peak load test, make use of a global filter to limit your analysis to the time that was spent AT
PEAK LOAD, so that your response times do not include values measured during ramp up.
 Percentile Graph Analysis
Look at each response time in the percentile graph to see if there are any weird “step” patterns. The lines in the
percentile graph should always be smooth, if there is a weird “step” pattern that could indicate abnormal
behavior.
 Import External Data
Remember that you can import data from external monitors/text files (Tools > External Monitors > Import Data).
  Merging graphs
this is useful but don’t put too many values on the graph, or it will be hard to interpret. Combine multiple data
types can be confusing. Use Annotations.
 Edit the Transaction Summary in Excel or Word.
The Transaction Summary can be easily copied and pasted into either Word or Excel, this allows it to be easily
edited. For example, removing columns and reduced the decimal points displayed.
 Only use Complete Data
After initially opening a Load Runner result, only summary data is available. In the lower-left corner, you will
notice the generation of Complete Data. You should always wait until this background process completes
before editing graphs.
 Remove the data point markers
Use Display Options > Graph Type to quickly remove all the data point marks for your line graph. This makes it
look a lot less cluttered.
 Make use of Templates
this feature (Tools > Templates) allows you to quickly apply the same graphs and formatting from one Analysis
scenario to another. This is great for comparing results; however always double-check filters to after applying a
template to ensure you are not filtering out any important data.

Loadrunner Analysis
Here are a number of tricks to cut down effort required for making Analysis data available with HP Performance
Center. I realized that some of these are not known when talking to colleagues who have been working with
Performance Center for a while.  I decided to collect them here… Hopefully it will be a benefit for some of you.
Opening analysis data

Downloading raw result files from the Performance Center to open the results in Loadrunner Analysis is cumbersome
(consider download time, unzipping, and then waiting for your desktop to produce the charts). Just like HP
Loadrunner Virtual User Generator (VuGen), also the Analysis tool can be connected directly to the Performance
Center, so the desired test results can be opened via the File/Open function. However it is only available if the results
have already been analyzed by the Performance Center.
 Connect the Loadrunner Analysis desktop application to the Performance Center to be able to access test results directly
Get Performance Center to analyse the test

It is practical to let the Performance Center do the majority of the work for calculation of test results.

1. This saves time if the Performance Center is running on a more powerful machine than the tester’s
workstation.
2. Also the volume of downloaded data is substantially less than downloading the raw results.
3. Analysis data will be available right from the Performance Center User interface (results.html at the test
results view), so the Analysis desktop app will not be needed to take a first glance of the test results.

Starting data analysis manually at the Performance Center user interface

Automate analysis process

There are several ways to start test analysis on the Performance Center user interface.

The most common is to activate the „Analyze” button in the Currently Running test view.
I am in the habit of running overnight tests, and I like to start the morning looking at the fresh results, instead of
waiting for the long process of the Analysis to run.

The test can be configured to automatically start analysis when the test is finished. See the screenshots below.

Choose 'Collate and analyse' to start data processing at the end of the test

If the test is scheduled (rather than started manually), automatic analysis can be configured as seen below.
 Automatic data analysis can be started for scheduled tests too.
Reduce data volumes

In the course of a long-running stability test the collected raw data volumes can grow massively. This makes the
analysis especially long-winded. For stability testing, exact results (e.g response times, resource usage) are usually
not vital.  So the sampling frequency can be lowered to cut down the amount of collected raw data. This can be
configured in the Performance Center Options pane. Here I have set 60 seconds sampling rate (instead of the default
5 and 3 seconds).

Reduce the collected data volumes for long running tests.