Review: LoadRunner 9.0 - Don’t do it!
September 27, 2007 – 7:02 amThe verdict is in… LoadRunner 9.0 is a bust. Based on Mercury’s track record with new releases, it isn’t too surprising that the latest release of LoadRunner is buggy. What is surprising is how many steps backwards the product has gone with very few new features. The discussion board on Mercury support site is filled with accounts of crashes, hangs and failures. The experience at my company was the same: the product is just too unstable to use. I hope it is not an indicator of what to expect now that HP is running the show.
New Features
The new SLA feature is the primary new feature, and it is a great feature that could really help with reporting results. It’s definitely nice to look at the report and get a quick green/red indicator of whether the transaction met the performance SLAs. SLAs can be set in the Controller before executing the scenario, or they can be configured afterwards in the Analysis application. User reports in the discussion group indicate that there could be problems if you configure in the Controller and then try to change them in the Analysis.
Another new feature in the Controller is the scheduler, which allows for more flexibility in designing tests (ramping up load at different rates, different times, etc.). It could be useful in modeling workload over the course of a day, with cyclical load peaks.
Installation
As long as you aren’t upgrading from a previous version of LoadRunner, you should be okay, but if you are upgrading, prepare yourself for several hours of hunting down and deleting keys in the Registry Editor. Seriously. There is even a Knowledge Base article describing that this is necessary.
Vugen
Crashes often. Hangs during recording. Slower than previous releases.
Controller
Crashes often.
Analysis
Analysis crashes every time you try to launch it from the Controller. No more can you run a test, then click the Analyze button and have Analysis start up and start processing the results. Now, you have to start the Analysis application from the start menu, then open the result file from the File menu. This behavior has been duplicated not only at my company, but others have reported the same problem, and apparently it’s a known issue according to a poster on LR discussion group. Nice work HP.
Conclusion
Don’t bother. Wait for the next Service Pack and let others be the guinea pigs to see if all of the problems get fixed. For such a mature product, it really is surprising that this newest release is so bad.
3 Responses to “Review: LoadRunner 9.0 - Don’t do it!”
Thanks for the information. Are you running LR on Windows XP Server Edition? Any chance you could add the date stamp to the post? Assuming HP fixes things this post may not be true in the future. Good luck with the site, looks like a good start!
By skadamo on Oct 19, 2007
Thanks for the feedback, the creation date is now visible. We’re running LR on Windows Server 2003, but the evaluation of LR 9.0 was done on XP Desktop Edition
By cw on Oct 19, 2007
I’ve been trying to get an Evaluation Copy of Loadrunner 9.0 but the HP site isn’t working. When I click on the HP Loadrunner 9.0 Windows Evaluation Link, and then click “I agree”, I’m sent to “Sorry We Can’t find that page”. I tried to download last week and was not successful then either
I also called sales at 1-800-837-8911 and a recorded message states that all inside sales rep’s are at a kickoff meeting until Nov 19.
This is a funny way to do business. The download site doesn’t work and the entier sales force is out for the week……
By gdcapra on Nov 16, 2007