OpenText Enterprise Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Enterprise) Reviews

It supports an extensive portfolio of protocols. It supports everything from the very basic web HTTP, which is kind of the bread and butter of load performance testing tools, to Citrix, Oracle, and even some Real X, and others. The breadth of the product is very valuable.

It is a very powerful tool. They pitch it as the market leader and it kind of is. It's that big “one-tool-fits-all” kind of option. You don't need to go and get several tools, each of which supports an individual kind of protocol. You can do pretty much everything on the entire stack with one tool. That makes it good.

It centralized our ability to offer a performance engineering service. We’ve been up as a one-stop shop for projects and programs to come in. We know what tools we’re going to use. Rather than custom fitting something for each project, we can say, “This is what we're going to recommend."

I'd like to see a more shared data repository. They have their costs up. I think they could expand it out a bit more so we could have it running across synthetic users and protocol types.

The stability is very good. A couple years ago, you might have been able to point a finger at HPE and say maybe they weren't doing enough with the product; so it was probably unstable. As it is, over the last couple of years, they've innovated a bit more. There's been a bit more change without losing the core stability.

The scalability is good. We got Performance Center, which is kind of the enterprise version of LoadRunner. That solved a number of pinch points for us by enabling us to run multiple performance engineering programs at once; so that is really good.

Technical support is really good. I’ve had stuff bounced around the world to have problems solved.

We were previously using LoadRunner and we moved to Performance Center. Under the covers, they are very much the same, but Performance Center just has a lot more flexibility from a licensing perspective and from a setup and management perspective. It was kind of a natural evolution.

The initial setup was really reasonably straightforward. We pretty much just followed the installation guide.

We also considered Microsoft. We chose HPE because of its breadth of capability.

When we selected a vendor, it was a trade-off between having the best in class and the price. It needs to be cheap and we need to get along with them.

Whether I would advise colleagues to choose this solution is entirely situationally dependent. It fits our needs and our project portfolio, but that doesn't mean that it will meet everyone else's needs.

What I really like is our team's core competence in building good tests that really do find issues, because of our full-time dedication to it. We have Performance Center as a platform to share with others that don't do performance testing full-time, so that they in an agile fashion, on demand can go ahead and get real issue-finding testing done; then to go ahead and have that pulled into trending reports so that even subtle differences or trends over time are found and not just game-changing defects. Again, it's a platform to get expert level things done for the masses.

It allows us to on the reporting end show how even though we don't have a smoking gun on this release, and it made everything so terrible that we've got real quality issues, we know when it started and that it's only getting worse. When you're tracking many subtle interactions, this is helpful.

I know there are integrations with continuous testing. It's got tie-ins to some of the newer tools to allow continuous testing. I'd love to see us not have to customize it, but for it to be out of the box.

I have some concern over its foundation for utilizing cloud testing hosts in the most integrated fashion. For example there is reliance in AWS to utilize default VPC, and also there is not deep knowledge about utilizing *nix hosts though they are supported.

I have used this solution at four different places starting 13 years ago.

It's good. It's been around a long time and we've been using it a long time. It's stable.

We're up to 60,000 users. It's got a good system for being able to take a vast amount of data that you haven't put into a particular report and chug through it. It could take a while, but it's stable at that.

It comes up periodically; typically when we're doing something we haven't done before. We actually have a combination of support through them and one of their value added re-sellers, AVNET. We actually get level one support through them, so it's a partnered supported arrangement.

Typically AVNET can handle anything unless it's truly about requesting a new feature or enhancement. You need to get back to the product management and developers to request such things.

It has many tiers, it's not a single system thing. You definitely have to take the time to architect it correctly, to have a full topology. I've done it a few times.

As professionals, we're supposed to be some what tool agnostic. We'll find a way to get it done. That said, it's a mature player in the space. We do enjoy some long time knowledge about squeezing the good stuff out of it.

Performance Center is actually run by a performance engineering group so in every release you have a performance engineering phase that runs at the same time as UAT. That's pretty much used to ensure that we're going to hit our production stability, scalability, etc., when a product finally goes in.

That is used in a phase gate, it's not continually run. That's one of the things we're eventually going to get to, that you continually run it.

Our performance engineering team has feedback on Performance Center, so they don't utilize as many of the features as they should. They have it, part of it could be training, but they're not using it as much as they should. They use it, but they're not taking full advantage of all the features in it, meaning they are not combining it with UFT, etc.

They just run it to run the virtual users and then load and stress test, and that's pretty much what they're doing. They're not really taking advantage of the whole stack like we do. That's another group as well.

Stable in the fact that it does what it does, it does it well. Why they use other tools, that's where I would say there's some poly-functionality that has to be improved in the product. I'd have to specifically interrogate them on what they're not getting out of it. It's stable, it's up, and it runs, but if you want to look at is it as highly leveraged as it could be, it's not so much.

We're already at enterprise scale, so it's used across the enterprise. I would say that we're at that point.

Originally we were using LoadRunner, and then we had to upgrade to Performance Center because with LoadRunner we didn't maintain currency with the license. That's another group that manages that. They just kind of were using it as it is. Then when we upgraded to version 11, we had compatibility issues and we had to go to Performance Center. I think they just didn't get used to it. I don't know exactly what they are or are not using in that stack, but part of it is we were forced to upgrade.

I have an entire team, so I'm a director and I have an entire tools team that does that. I did get involved in the planning and the strategy of how we're going to do it. My team said that first installation is relatively easy. When we go to upgrade and migrate, that's where there's pain.

We have to use other products like Selenium and a lot of custom scripting, et cetera, but that's the nature of the business. That ends up happening everywhere.

Have a well-defined process, have a strong reporting structure, meaning in your process you want a lot of measurability. If you define your output, the reports and the questions you need to answer from what you're doing, which your process should be managing for you. In our company, we are very specific about what our executives and stakeholders want.

We have a very well-defined set of measurements that we have to take. We then put a process designed to ensure those measurements are always taken. That then allows you to deal with your outputs and your reporting structure, which then allows you to properly architect your tooling. The technology is very flexible. You have to decide as a client area how you really want to use it and that's going to start with what your business needs are the values that you're trying to get out of it.

That's the biggest advice that I have, it's not even on the technology. The technology will do great things for you if you have a plan and a structure and you know what you want it to do for you. Half the time they don't know, they want the tool to do it for them and it's the other way around. So that's what I advise people to do.

Think about it, have a vision, have a plan, tie that to outcomes, and measure those outcomes. If you're answering the right questions and asking the right questions, your technology will really enable you. You've got to look at it from that standpoint.

We still have a legacy LoadRunner, but we are moving towards this tool. For our web applications, we are moving towards Performance Center, because it is more GUI and user-friendly, and with all the latest technologies. It's pretty easy to learn how to use.

I don't know if it is available or it depends on the licenses, but reports from Performance Center need to be improved. If we can improve the reporting structure and we can view the report on a smartphone, that would be huge.

We always have to get connected if there is a report. It's doesn't need to be the full tool, but just like how HPE Discover has an app, if we can have an app just for reports, that would help.

I've been using it for about six to eight months.

We are still learning and evaluating it.

All of our applications are not yet on Performance Center.

It was even before I joined. We were using LoadRunner. LoadRunner is a leading load testing tool in the market. Whenever a customer or anyone looks for a tool, the first thing which comes to mind is HP. We have seen StormRunner and we are here at HPE Discover 2016 to check out tools. We will see how they scale, and probably will make a decision soon.

Nothing wrong with it, but I have to learn more about it to see if it's going to match our needs. Performance Center has everything which LoadRunner offers, plus additional things.

Performance Center allows multiple users to access and work on a project simultaneously. 

Additionally, it keeps a run log and allows for script and scenario versioning. 

I also like the scheduling feature that allows us to manage multiple projects using the same controller and load generators.

I am a performance tester, and I need a product that can maintain my scripts, scenarios, monitors and run logs. Performance Center is my product of choice.

Just recently, I used the command line feature to create scripts that can be used across multiple environments. That feature saved me a great deal of time --thousands in man hours over the last year.

The trending reports do not always work as I would expect them to. I have had issues with transaction times being pulled in correctly. 

Additionally, trending a test run can take over 30 minutes when it should take five.

I've used it for five years.

Performance Center requires regular maintenance in order to remain stabl

No

The company I work for provides Performance Center support.  Orasi has won several awards for their HP support.  I use Orasi support when ever I require customer service for an HP product.  I have never had an opportunity to use HP customer service.

I have had the opportunity to use two other products briefly. Unfortunately, I did not have enough experience to speak to this with any authority.

I was not involved in the deployment of any of the instances of Performance Center that I have used. However, I have been involved in three different upgrades for three different clients. 

When Performance Center is managed properly with proper maintenance, there were no issues with upgrades. I have seen instances of script corruption, user access difficulties and project corruption. 

It is necessary to have an experienced Performance Center administrator providing regular maintenance.

Orasi Software does Performance Center implementation. I am not a member of that team. I have been on projects where Performance Center was implemented by the client and then Orasi was called to correct any issues. 

Again, I cannot stress enough how important it is to have an experienced administrator. It may cost more initially but it will save time and money later.

The return on investment is immeasurable. One of my first clients was an entertainment company that called us after their production site had gone down for a day. The reservation system was down for over six hours. They estimated they had lost in excess of three million dollars an hour. 

Regular performance testing prevents such occurrences. Needless to say they have not been down since.

The price tag on Performance Center is a large one. It can be daunting. There are so many options now with Cloud Controllers, using Cloud Load Generators, purchasing VUser licenses by the day or even hour. Additionally, Performance Center in the cloud relieves you of the essential maintenance and administration requirements.

I was trained on HP LoadRunner and then Performance Center.  I was not involved in any evaluation process.

Performance Center is not difficult to pick up for a beginner. When I was first introduced to Performance Center, I had just started my career as a performance test engineer. It is not completely intuitive though. I believe there are some extraneous requirements. As I mentioned before an experience administrator is recommended.

The command line feature allows you to set a parameter value at the scenario level. It can be applied to all scripts in a scenario. This feature has saved me a great deal of time.

It's the most flexible and best solution for our people who are both offshore and onshore because of the reporting capabilities. When we hire new employees, we look for people who have used this tool for testing experience.

It's allowed us to really focus on load testing and to get some results that we've reported to our business managers.

Another thing we really like is that it takes advantage of our monitoring tools when we're performance testing. They work well together.

The migration from LoadRunner to Performance Center was not as smooth as I would have liked. Some of it was not the tool but us, but it still could have been smoother and taken a little bit less time.

We started off with LoadRunner and we've been using that for probably a year, and then we just recently converted over to the Performance Center, which is their staff solution, in the last year.

We've had no issues with deployment, other than the initial migration.

It's stable now.

For situations in which we've had to scale up a little bit, they've been there to help us. We didn't have any trouble scaling.

I have not been as impressed as with their other products. They do respond, they do have the knowledge to do this but it hasn't been the same as what I've seen with other products. A little more challenging.

We were challenged in out setup, making it more complex, because we didn't us HP cloud and were using AWS instead. Some of the connections weren't set up properly.

Make sure you figure out what you want before you buy. Determine how many and what types of licenses you need.

Although there may be other products out there that do an amazing job, they don't necessarily have the skill set in the industry that makes it worth me going out there and looking at them.

During implementation, make sure you're talking about a cloud solution. You may be implementing in multiple areas, so planning is very important.

The most valuable feature is the enterprise card. It allows us to use our central software for all our testers who are located worldwide.

It's a rather complex product. There are always things that could be better, such as new protocols that allow for more efficient testing and sharing of data across our teams.

It needs to be able to inform us what our current situation is, that is, what version we're on, etc. This is important because we do reinstalls and upgrades once a year, so that information is still valid for us each time we do that.

We have been using it for six years.

The stability is pretty good.

It's the right size for us right now for our purposes and we will not grow out of it any time soon. So scalability is not relevant at this time.

When you initially file a support case, it's difficult because they ask you many technical question to assess the problem. This takes a long time. I think there should be a better way for HP to know what the situation is so that you don't have to think about it for half a day.

The initial setup was OK, wasn't too complex.

We worked out the complexities ourselves.

I've looked, but I haven't found any alternatives -- including web-based applications -- that are better than Performance Center.

It's a very capable solution and I highly recommend it.

For us, the features we value and use the most are web and HTTP support. It also has protocols that are easy to use, such as mainframe communication, and provides the ability to schedule functionalities.

For example, we've scheduled a week of performance testing, and when it runs, it does so without breaking. It then provides the resources available and analysis of the results of tests based on monitoring preferences.

It's our main tool for performance testing.

It needs integration with open-source tools. It should also have version control of scripts, SDI, or GitHub. I'd also like to see some kind of EDI integration and open-source support.

It's deployed well for us.

We're using version 11.5 right now and it's OK. The latest version is 12.5, and we need to upgrade ASAP. The previous versions were pretty unstable, but that's been fixed now.

It is very scalable.

The first-level guys are OK, but when you get to the R&D guys in third-level support, they're excellent. But our company policy requires us to go though our IT department as they're pretty experienced with Performance Center. But this takes a long time.

You should be aware of what you want to test. Could you settle for a less pricey solution? It's a very expensive tool, and it has a lot of features you may not need.

It's an expensive tool, so you need to be prepared to invest in training your people and to have patience as they will need to use it a lot to become adept at it.

The most valuable features to us are--

• Ease of uploading the scripts, and
• Script maintenance.

• Multiple users from different locations can login.
• We can view tests at run time, which has helped us to execute tests from different time zones.

Sometimes the Book Time Slot option hangs if I cancel any test or time slot. Also, if the results file gets corrupted, then we need to contact HP to get the raw results.

• Standalone PC – six years
• SaaS PC – two years

We encountered no issues when deploying.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've scaled without issue.

Customer service is excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

I have used Borland SilkTest, JMeter and LoadUI. JMeter and LoadUI have limitations in terms of the protocols. SilkTest is not as user friendly as Performance Center.

It was not complex, but I needed to consult HP support a couple of times for clarification and for help in registering the load injectors.

We did it in-house.

If the organization is going to test multiple protocols like Ajax, TruClient, Citrix, and SAP frequently, then there is definitely a high ROI in using this tool. If it's only the HTTP protocol being used, then other less expensive tools will be sufficient.

It is quite expensive.

The main features are the ability to customize the product configuration and the customization to adapt with the customer environment. Additionally, the product flexibility, and stability are also valuable.

We are able to manage and monitor our entire environment. We're also able to perform capacity management, performance management, and configuration management.

I've used it for around seven years.

There are many issues that require day-to-day maintenance. The issues vary from customer to customer, and I can’t list all the issues as it becomes business as usual.

It's OK.

It's OK.

We chose this solution because it's very flexible, scalable, and allows customization in a wide range of areas.

I've implemented it both ways, and my advice is to get the vendor to help you design a detailed plan and manage that plan.