OpenText Core Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Cloud) Reviews

We use a warehouse management system, my company is like a Dutch Amazon. We use LoadRunner to performance test the warehouse management system for peak load. So if Valentine's Day, Christmas, or whatever comes up, we try to run all functional loads through LoadRunner Cloud and make sure the peak count can be handled by the WMS. We use it almost daily. We have peak periods where the testing will increase, but nowadays it's so busy that throughout the year, it's almost the same. It's the same high load every day and we're testing continuously.

The amount of load on the system wasn't that large a couple of years ago for us to test. So the business case for performance testing wasn't pointing to investing in it, but now we have such huge, increasing numbers and increasing load that it's worthwhile setting up a structured and automated performance test and to invest in something like LoadRunner Cloud.

We use the cloud. The controllers and the dashboard servers are in the Micro Focus cloud. But we use our own load generators, which are on-premise. So we use a hybrid setup.

Before LoadRunner, we weren't even testing performance and now we're performance testing. So we now do performance testing as part of the delivery of a new release, which is an improvement compared to a couple of years ago. 

The TruClient feature is the most valuable for us. An application with testing can only be scripted using TruClient, so it's part web-based, but it also has its own protocol combined with HTTP and HTML. So many other tools do not recognize this specific proprietary protocol. Using TruClient, we can still create scripts that cover everything that we need to cover.

It supports multiple protocols, which is important to us. We also use JMeter open source combined in LoadRunner Cloud. In our company, we also use open-source performance testing tools like JMeter, Gatling, and Locust. It's important to be able to embed those scripts as well into a LoadRunner-based performance test. So it would really help us to have a single place for all kinds of test scripts and the open-source ones.

It's also very important to us that LoadRunner allows full integration into the ACI pipeline. We were focusing on a shift left on not only functional testing but also performance testing. And we're trying to integrate the performance testing in our CI/CD pipelines currently. So the better it supports this, the better and easier it is for us.

Reporting and analysis need improvement. Compared to the old school LoadRunner Windows application, the reporting and analysis are mediocre in LoadRunner Cloud.

I've been using LoadRunner since I started at this company one and a half years ago but the company has been using it for longer. 

We don't have any issues with stability. 

When it comes to efficient and cost-effective scalability, it can be expensive. It is efficient, but also expensive. So the balance would then be just okay.

It's used intensively by the three performance engineers, daily. We have plans to have other teams also use LoadRunner Cloud. So we hope it will increase.

We do our own maintenance on the on-premise part and Micro Focus does the maintenance on the cloud part.

We don't call customer support but we do online requests. We have put in service requests. They're helpful and the replies are quick and valuable. It helps us out.

We make use of virtual user hours. We buy time in the LoadRunner Cloud. It costs around $80,000.

I don't think there are any additional costs to standard licensing.

We tried Neoload and looked at JMeter. We chose LoadRunner because that was the only performance testing tool that had something like TruClient.

We're thinking about using LoadRunner Developer integration. We want to hand over the performance testing responsibility from our performance testing guilds to the actual feature teams, to the scrum teams, so they can do it themselves. The developers do their own performance testing in an early stage, and maybe that is a solution for that.

My advice would be to look at whether you need on-premise load generators or fully on the cloud. Invest in training. It can be complex. You need some training to get started.

I would rate LoadRunner an eight out of ten. 

It is all about load testing. We have to do a lot of load testing in our IT environment. In the investment banking space, you do a lot of end-to-end endurance testing, to see how to benchmark performance based on resources and the CPU memory. So, we will have to benchmark the performance based on trade volumes. Trade volumes are the basic KPI.

Endurance testing needs to be done to see how many trades can be pumped in my environment. I do endurance testing. 

better decision making was done Business KPI & technical KPI can be set by automating loy of endurance testing where given resources thresholds capacity can be measured against  business kpis

The record and playback feature is the most valuable feature. It's all driven by the script, so it's a script-based tool where the background tracing starts. Java's background process does a lot of tracing. The process starts in the background. It sees what peaks of volumes the process can handle. It's easy to use because it's script based, record and playback. I play certain tests. I record those tests, see how they pass through the entire environment, and see how many breaks I get. 

Then we repeat that for multiple numbers. If the first time, I pumped in 1 million trades, and get 5% of the failures, then I try with 2 million trades and I see that there is a 7% failure. These scenarios are easy to do in the LoadRunner. LoadRunner has been the best tool for more than 20 years in the market.

You can do endurance testing, you can do load testing. These are the different types of load testing. It lets you see how much volume you can benchmark in your entire environment, given the resources like CPU and RAM. 

The record and playback is the best feature. You need to use a console. You log in to your console and see the dashboard with how many trades failed and how many trades passed, what the peak loads endurance load were. 

The performance has really improved in terms of running test cycles. The product used to crash on-premises and when it had a lot of trades being pumped in. Because it is memory intensive, it used to crash if it was running out of memory. That was the limitation of the on-premises thing. Running those states and cycles in the cloud is much faster. 

Everything is frozen in the cloud. The RAM, CPU, compute, and storage are provisioned in the cloud, which is becoming easier for running these test cycles. Test cycles are highly effective. Of course, you need to have a test strategy, like volume-based load testing. Configure some test cases and run those test cases in cycles. Cloud performance is much faster. Volume-based endurance testing is easier in the cloud.

It is an old solution, around 20 years old. It was called once Mercury LoadRunner and then it was acquired by HP, it became HP QTP. That was around 2007, it was known as Hewlett-Packard HP QTP. Since then it has been acquired by OpenText.

It is very stable.

We have around 100 users, they are functional experts who use this for load testing.

The people who have been responsible for setting the KPIs will decide if we will expand the solution. They are the end-users. It will depend on the dashboard and the results of the load testing.

LoadRunner is a very old product in this industry. It was a little difficult to get to the right support team. Now there's a professional service group that is better than they were before. 

If scaling becomes a problem, then we have to involve the support, the right kind of support to actually fine-tune and troubleshoot the entire configuration. But with the cloud version, that risk is minimized. It has adequate storage available.

It's a subscription-based, pay-per-user license. I wouldn't say it's expensive. 

Because it was an on-premise license, it was a costly affair. Only certain stakeholders could use it. Now, it is enterprise-wide, we can have any number of cloud users performing the load testing because it is pay-per-user.

I would recommend LoadRunner. It is an industry-leading tool. You can benchmark the volumes on the dashboard and it is easy to use.

I would definitely recommend it for investment banks and certain businesses like OTC derivatives.

I would rate LoadRunner an eight out of ten. It has good documentation. The recording and playback scripts can be easily done. I would like for there to be better integration with other tools so that when you do load testing you can also do a security check.

We use LoadRunner Cloud for functional testing, where we can log in online using the portal.

Our primary use case is load testing, where we can simulate a scenario with more than 100 users accessing the system at the same time. This shows us things such as the performance of the system and how it reacts when multiple people are using it.

The most valuable feature is that we do not have to accommodate the load-testing infrastructure in our own data center. Normally for load testing, you have to have your own hardware and tools on-premises. With LoadRunner Cloud, the testing will be done remotely using their resources.

There are three modules in the system that are different products packaged into one, and they can sometimes be difficult to figure out, so they should be better integrated with each other.

The current support model is something that can be improved.

We have been using this product for five years.

This is a stable product and as far as we're concerned, there is no other choice on the market.

We are just in the process of scaling now. Our intention is to expand but it will take time to do so. We are using it for five projects right now and we need to acquire more licenses.

At this time, Micro Focus is handling the support, which is kind of messy compared to going directly to HP. There is no single point of contact between sales and support.

Sometimes, if you open a ticket with technical support then we might be waiting for a week. It is not always this way, but in general, it is not what we would expect.

We also use HP ALM for functional testing.

The initial setup of the cloud version is easy compared to using it on-premises. In the on-premises deployment, you have to set up all of the servers starting with bare metal and it will take no less than three months to deploy. However, with LoadRunner Cloud, all you have to do is buy the resources and execute it from there.

There is no monthly or yearly cost but rather, the fees are based on the amount of traffic that you use. It is difficult to predict the costs until after you have begun using it.

My advice for anybody who is implementing LoadRunner Cloud is to make sure that when you buy the package, it is comprehensive. All of the modules should be there, including the support package. Otherwise, it will be hard to use.

In summary, all of the features that we need are there and it does everything that it is supposed to it. That said, the integration of modules and support are still in need of improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I have been using the solution for testing Salesforce and a few other applications.

The solution has improved the performance of the software.

The solution is intuitive, easy to use and navigate.

They should minimize the use of coding for the solution. Also, they should include features to import other scripts without rewriting them.

I have been using the solution since 2019.

It is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable. I rate its scalability between a seven and nine out of ten.

The solution's technical support has been good.

Positive

We have used StormRunner and JMeter before. Also, we are doing a proof-of-concept for NeoLoad.

The solution's setup process was easy. Although, we encountered a few issues sometimes.

The solution is expensive. There should be a version that optimizes the price-to-performance ratio for the service package.

The solution is costly. I rate it a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for the solution is performance testing, validation and baseline testing. We deploy the solution on the cloud.

We find the ease of infrastructure maintenance and the enhanced capabilities of the cloud version, such as browser metrics, valuable.

The product price could be more affordable compared to similar products.

We have been using the solution for approximately three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup was straightforward, and it took approximately a day.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. My advice to users considering this solution is to pay attention to scheduling.

We primarily use this solution to deploy our apps to the server, for public use.

The usability and ability to integrate with other solutions is quite good. When I use it in on Azure, then Red Hat is the most likely solution I use. When I use AWS, then I tend to use Lambda functions. In either case, it works well and you can use it either way.

The features on offer do everything we need them to.

I don't know of any features that should be added. The solution isn't lacking anything at this point. We're happy with what is on offer.

I have had seven years of experience using this solution. It's been quite a while at this point.

We're a customer. We don't have any business partnerships with the company.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall. The solution has been quite good and integrates well with other products. It has all of the features we need and isn't really lacking anything that we've noticed.

I have been using LoadRunner Cloud for performance testing.

LoadRunner Cloud allows us to do performance testing without having to create our own physical infrastructure and set up a load generator. Normally, these steps would be required.

The most valuable feature is that you can create an infrastructure on-demand and do performance testing with it. There is no need to create physical infrastructure.

Using this solution does not require the use of a load generator.

Improvements to the reporting would be good.

Technical support can be improved.

I have used LoadRunner Cloud in only one project so far, for a period of about three months.

I have found this to be a very stable product.

I only needed to simulate 40,000 users for my project but I understand that it will work for up to 2,000,000 users. That is huge and I can say that scalability is very good.

This vendor, Micro Focus, is not very good at technical support.

I have used some open-source tools and LoadRunner Cloud is more straightforward to use.

The initial setup is normal and I have not found any complexity with it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it to get response times around the world for external applications. We use it on top of our own virtual users for remote site testing. We include it in our scenarios in our performance center and use the results in the LoadRunner analysis tool.

We can determine response times for our external applications, from most places around the world, for a small fee.

The most valuable feature is having load generators in countries where we don’t have access to them.

An area for improvement is analytics on why response times are slow from certain countries. Slowness can be caused by the laptop, the connection, the VPN, the internal network, the country's internet, etc.

It has been stable every time I have used it. We don’t put much stress on it since we have our own performance center and load generators.

In terms of integration and configuration of the product in our AWS environment, it is the easiest Micro Focus tool I have ever used.

The pricing is very reasonable and the licensing is straightforward.

You decide on the number of virtual users you will need to support multiple runs or for a year and purchase that quality of virtual-user hours. We chose to procure this solution via the AWS Marketplace because of remote site testing and low cost.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten. It addresses a need in performance testing tools and is easy to purchase and use.

The best benefit would be budget. It's a really inexpensive if you are testing your application every spring or every month. Even for less frequent applications that you have to test regularly. You can hook up your infrastructure to StormRunner Cloud and you can get the best of both worlds.

In larger enterprises, we have different departments using Performance Center and StormRunner or Selenium. So, StormRunner can act like an umbrella and plug-in everything, get it executed or done across the world. Since they use both HPE Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft, it uses more access points geographically to test it making it best of the class.

StormRunner itself is a pretty good hybrid product of Performance Center. Keeping up with DevOps, thus the best feature of StormRunner is that we don't have to build and maintain infrastructure anymore. Whenever we have to test lab scale applications, and in a scenario where we don't have to test every day, we don't have to build the machines and pay for it. Instead, we can get the infrastructure from on-demand from StormRunner, and its ability to run it anywhere just by opening it in browser is the best part. The evolution of StormRunner starting with supporting LoadRunner along with the open source technologies like JMeter and Selenium. Their unit testing tools are actually very advanced in the region of the product. That's why I would recommend anyone to use StormRunner, even though something is not supported now, eventually it's going to be supported by StormRunner. That's the kind of credibility that's needed for any customer when it comes to relying on a product or going for a new product.

More insight into test results and allowances. It might be a tailor-made requirement for me, but I would like to download them offline and do my own customizations on the reports. Right now, we have some standard templates that generates reports. But if I had to do some customizations, include something else and create a report, it's not easy. So, if I can an order to download the raw data I can make custom report. That would be the case with every customer because even though they tested one product it might be part of a big project and they need to have other information included in it along with the report, so feasibly it is good to have.

Also, it's evolving, where there's too many features for me to handle and it's too much on my plate to any make ROI out of it.

There is a steep learning curve for the product, too.

Over the last couple of years, it's been evolving. We started using more in the last one year and we see it's pretty stable. Adding new features to StormRunner is going to slow down once it has every feature. That has to do with stability and I don't see any drawback in that.

We haven't really hit any scalability issues by using StormRunner, but I just now heard that they can support two million users, which is kind of astonishing. The max I have used is 40,000 users, but two million is good, too. It's big step up from 40,000.

At the same time, you don't have to get the infrastructure built and set it up. For example, let's say you had to test it for one million users. You don't have to procure all of the machines you need for the one test you're going to do. You can do it on demand, that's the best thing. Two million is still very much overboard, but it's good to know. It's good to know that there's no limitation nearby.

I'm not a big fan of the tech support to be frank. SaaS tech support (HPE tech support or Micro Focus), there's a gap between the people who access our tickets and the people who know the product. So, there is always a blind exchange of information within Micro Focus and most of the time get frustrated with the kind of ticket updates we get. What happens is the person handling the ticket might not be an expert in the product so we end up redoing everything. Communicating everything about our setup and infrastructure and the customer engagement for each ticket. Therefore, we started involving our technical correspondent with Micro Focus, but we're told that it's a pretty messy situation over there.

I always thought it would be good to have something like this from HPE because we rely a lot on HPE. Then, StormRunner was released and I knew where exactly it was going and what's it would be for us.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward and there was a lot of good information available, but I did not need it. I didn't go through any support to set it up. The documentation itself was good.

The other product we considered was BlazeMeter. We eventually chose StormRunner. I think only those two are pretty much in the market - nothing else.

I like that StormRunner incorporates the idea of accepting and adapting all open sources. It is my understanding that they are planning to continue accepting, supporting, and adapting all open sources.

For someone evaluating StormRunner and similar products, there are two parameters I would tell him to evaluate:

1. Is the application under test? Is it customer facing?
2. Is how often do you test it?

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We are a retail business. The first thing I look for is any customer use case, or case study for the vendor. I look to see if they have proven that they are good resource for any existing retail customers. I look for any kind of case study in those lines before I jump in.

Its ability to work well with other HP products, particularly SiteScope, allows us to maintain consistency in our infrastructure. The different solutions work seamlessly together and free up resources that would otherwise be spent on conflicting vendors and products.

It's fast, easy to use, has a user-friendly UI, and you can split users. It also works well with SiteScope and other HP products.

It doesn't provide custom reports. You can only use the default reports which contain irrelevant data or is missing data that we need.

Also, a lot of our customers have issues logging into the cloud.

It's been stable.

It scales fine because our customers are usually larger.

Technical support is something we're not so happy with.

The initial setup is straightforward.