OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) Reviews

In the banking industry, we utilize OpenText LoadRunner Professional to evaluate how systems handle increased workloads.

I implemented OpenText LoadRunner Professional because I encountered challenges when working with Oracle protocols in the banking industry, specifically regarding ticket resolution during correlation tasks.

What distinguishes OpenText LoadRunner Professional from other solutions is its controller log, which we use to simulate the number of users, and its user-friendly UI settings, which allows us to mimic user activity during performance testing.

LoadRunner has helped us save time. With a proper understanding of how the interface works, we can complete tasks quickly.

Employing LoadRunner has significantly enhanced our product quality, which is of paramount importance to us. With LoadRunner, we can precisely identify performance bottlenecks within our application and implement effective solutions to optimize its performance.

When it comes to simulation and report management, LoadRunner helps reduce our workload.

The front loader and the reporting features are the most valuable aspects of OpenText LoadRunner Professional.

The reporting and GUI have room for improvement.

I want LoadRunner Professional to have the capability to track various statistics from network databases and application servers. Currently, we rely on gathering this information from the respective teams. If LoadRunner Professional could provide this information, it would become our preferred tool.

I have been using OpenText LoadRunner Professional for 12 years.

OpenText LoadRunner Professional is a stable solution.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. While the solution is scalable, there is an associated cost.

While OpenText provides excellent customer support for partners, the lack of a phone support option limits the ways we can interact with them. The only methods of communication are through their portal or via email. If phone support were available, the overall support experience would be flawless. Sometimes, the issues we encounter are complex and challenging to resolve through text alone. Having access to 24/7 phone support would be immensely beneficial, allowing us to connect directly with representatives to discuss these matters effectively.

I have experience using Apache JMeter, LoadRunner Community Edition, and LoadRunner Cloud Edition. As a support specialist, I continue to utilize these solutions indirectly based on the project requirements, as I am not the decision-maker regarding the specific tool selection.

The initial deployment is straightforward, requiring only basic knowledge of the application and operating system. A detailed manual is available on the OpenText website for reference.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The price is a bit on the high side, but it is still affordable.

I would rate OpenText LoadRunner Professional nine out of ten.

I would only recommend LoadRunner Professional's TruClient feature for browser-based testing if it is for a single application as it is easier for scripting.

The main purpose is to simulate realistic scenarios to define and test the performance of different solutions or applications. For example, if there is a project to launch, a mobile app, and you want to see how it's going to perform when it is used by multiple users, OpenText LoadRunner will provide in-depth reports on potential performance bottlenecks and issues.

Its variety of testing tools for different applications is of great benefit, as well as its integration capabilities with other testing and monitoring solutions.

Compared to some other vendors, there is a lack of community support. It affects the response time when certain information is needed and not many resources are available. 

I have been utilizing OpenText LoadRunner Professional for four years. 

It demonstrates exceptional stability and reliability. I would rate it ten out of ten. 

It is a very scalable solution that supports a wide range of application types and can handle increasing load demands. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I would rate it six out of ten.

Neutral

I was using JMeter previously, it works on a similar basis. LoadRunner has an issue with its limited support, while JMeter has an open source, and it is easy to integrate with different solutions. The downside of the JMeter is that it is inefficient to detect threats in large-scale applications.

The initial setup was fairly easy. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The deployment of the solution was seamless and done very fast, as we only had to install the frame test server. 

It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs. 

OpenText LoadRunner Professional aligns well with the specific requirements. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The product gives protocol support to our organization. It is the biggest benefit.

It's a good tool. The solution supports a lot of protocols. The interface is good.

The solution is complex. Integrating the tool into CI/CD pipelines, dockerizing, and containerization is a bit difficult. It is not as easy and user-friendly as doing it in Locust and Gatling. The solution must be more user-friendly. It should provide integrations with Jenkins or GitHub Actions.

Processes like docking and containerization must be made easy for a tester to do the process. If a process takes ten steps, it must be reduced to two to three steps. We should be able to integrate with Docker, Jenkins, or GitHub within two to three steps.

I have been working with the solution for six months.

The tool is stable.

The solution is scalable. We would need more machines based on our script complexity, based on which we need to assess how many load generators we need to run. We can support the cloud load generators if we have a cloud account. Otherwise, we can choose k6 or Gatling because they support more virtual users for a given hardware resource. It is a simple web application. We can choose open-source tools rather than using a paid load testing tool.

Support is very good. I rate the technical support around eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex. We will be able to install it, but it will take a lot of steps. Open-source tools take two to three steps, while paid tools take eight to ten steps for deployment. The implementation is user-friendly.

I have been using the paid version of the product.

Nowadays, most of the features supported by LoadRunner can be obtained in JMeter. Many development-driven tools like Locust are coming up in the market, which are easy to integrate with CI/CD tools. Dockerizing, containerization, and running the performance test through the CI/CD pipeline are pretty much easier with development-driven tools like Locust and Gatling.

LoadRunner and WebLOAD support a lot of protocols that other open-source tools are not able to support. However, most features supported by these tools are available in the latest tools. Correlation can be done within five to ten minutes in LoadRunner. Whereas, in JMeter, it would take half an hour. JMeter’s UI is simple compared to LoadRunner’s.

To start working on performance testing, we need to use LoadRunner to understand all the concepts. LoadRunner helps us understand how the actual user distribution happens. After using LoadRunner, we can work on JMeter. JMeter doesn't have any script writing so we can manage it with the elements in the tool. Later, we can shift to any of the developer version tools.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scaling is definitely one of the best features of this solution. There are no issues scaling to 10,000 or 20,000 concurrent users.

This tool gives you a lot of options. It gives you hyper correlation, etc., requiring much lower programming scans. It's very user-friendly.

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional supports other tools and protocols, such as SAP, Citrix, web services, etc.

Analyses are more in-depth and more detailed, and slicing and dicing is very easy. You can pinpoint load APIs at any point in time. You can know what was happening at a specific minute with regard to your requests, headers, response time, exceptions, etc. It has great reporting capabilities.

In terms of resource management, you need a lot of high capacity boxes if you need to generate a load of 1,000 or 2,000 users.

This solution has AJAX protocol or TruClient protocol, which gives you frontend stats and web vitals with very few details. This could be integrated further to exactly map any other leading tools for frontend analysis. That is, it needs further enhancements.

Easy maintenance would be good because now if you want to upgrade the version from X to Y, it takes a couple of days. There has to be downtime as well. Operation processes should be faster and should not have an impact for more than a couple of hours.

I've been using it for more than eight years.

Technical support is very good. We have a dedicated POC for Micro Focus. Although we have to follow the process of submitting tickets and waiting for a response, if it's a P zero issue, then we can directly connect with the technical person who has been allocated to us.

The SaaS version is quick and easy to set up. The on-premises version has a lot of challenges, especially related to the DB. You need to have a particular DB version to store the user data. Also, you have to depend on additional licensing from a database side. For instance, if you have Oracle, then you would need an additional license for the Oracle user.

The licensing is on a yearly basis and is relatively expensive.

If your team doesn't have much exposure to the development side, this is a good solution because you don't need much customization. You get a lot of automated features.

I would definitely recommend choosing the SaaS option rather than the on-premises option. The on-premises version has a lot of issues. For example, I'm dealing with version 12.63, and very soon, this particular version will be obsolete in terms of support. You will have to keep updating it in order to get the support for your version.

If you're looking for a tool which gives you more insight and you're ready to pay some extra dollars for it, then you should go for Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. However, if you need a simple, aim-and-shoot tool for load testing and getting stats out, then you probably don't need this tool that has an expensive license.

Apart from the cost, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is one of the natural product choices in the industry. So, I would rate it at nine out of ten. If the cost were relatively lower, then I would've given it a ten.

Based on the requirements, we use Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. Our clients have their licenses and access. So, we execute in the client environment itself, which involves, basically, running a load test or stress test using the tool and analyzing the system performance with different metrics like server session and clientset.

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional improved our organization's functioning. However, the cost is very high, and the support system is very low. If you ask for one ticket, like, you create a case, and they'll come back in one week of time. Then, they keep asking for most of the access to the environment, which is, like, the client's environment, and we can't provide access to the support. So there are a lot of challenges with those things. Upgrading to the new versions has a lot of challenges. The tool, access, and features they are building meet industry standards and are very helpful.

When you speak about its integration capabilities, especially when we talk about the latest version and not the older version that we had integrated with Dynatrace. So, we are integrating the current version with a tensor database and Grafana dashboards. So we can directly communicate it. The current version also integrates with DataDot, where whatever execution is there, we can collate results in DataDot itself and analyze the server-side metrics with that time duration so that everything is in one single place.

The kind of protocols that the current version supports is good since it's improved when compared to Version 12.55. I am very much happy with the tool and its process. The cost and the support lakhs a lot.

The support and price are the downsides of the solution. Micro Focus should decrease the cost. So, I'll explain one scenario. So, I work for multiple different clients to whom I provide support on the subject matter. Regarding the cost, if you consider 20,000 virtual user hours, if a user uses it for ten minutes, one virtual user is down. And if a user uses, like, 100 users for ten minutes, 100 virtual user hours are gone. So, instead of 100 multiplied by ten, it should be the number of minutes that get converted into hours, and that is the number of virtual hours that should be gone. In pay-per-use, the cost is more, and the unlimited license, like, an unlimited number of executions, costs even more. And mobile solutions, like earlier, could be integrated with the mobile center. Now mobile centers are very costly. So, doing it per device and testing has become challenging. I need to depend on other tools where I need to convert those scripts to LoadRunner and then run the test on this tool. So I need to pay two different software techs for licenses to solve mobile performance testing. In short, if that is done within that system, it could be helpful for us.

The licensing system is not very convenient for me. I would like to increase the number of working hours per license. Also, performance testing on mobile devices could be better.

Performance testing on mobile devices requires external software. You have many tools, and you have other tools which support on-device performance testing. So that tools can be integrated with LoadRunner. But, then the cost becomes high. So, if LoadRunner has some specific specialty, like, any on-device testing would be of a single user. If I connect my USB to a laptop and execute the test on a device, and test the application using the number of, like, one user running it for a certain duration of time, then it would be helpful for me to calculate the response time as well as the well device-level metrics like CPU memory or battery consumption. Right now, LoadRunner is lacking in the aforementioned areas.

Testing your kind of WebRTC protocols, like if you have a streaming application, and I want to join 5,000 concurrent user sessions. So, it is a one-session ID for 5,000 users joining that video session, and there is a tutor who is, like, teaching the lessons to the students. So this is a scenario. It's a kind of video conversation. I just want to analyze the number of users, the user behavior, video quality, audio quality, and how many users get dropped from the call. I think the latest version for 2023 doesn't support a few particular things causing lagging issues. It has an MQTT protocol, and executing a test on the Kafka messaging queue, I don't think we need to write a custom Java code and then we need to build those Java JAR files or load agents, and then, normally, we can run it. So there is a dependency. So there are a lot of Java JAR files we need to substitute and run. So instead of that, if LoadRunner itself has that entire tool set installed in their location, and if you can just plug and play the request, it would be good. If you go to Apache JMeter, it's simple, so if you go for ActiveMQ, I give the configuration details and then give a custom message. It is a simple step where I can execute and push thousands to ten thousands of messages to the queue. But in LoadRunner, it is a complex thing.

It's been three years since we tried to migrate from Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional Version 12.55 to LoadRunner Enterprise 2023, but there is no active support from the team. We did not deploy because of a lack of support. We need a license bundle if all things are to be migrated. We have one TB of data that needs to be migrated to the new system.

For maintenance, I think one person is required, and sometimes to update, like, if you do hundreds of activations and browse the tools, which overall has a slowness in general. So maintaining and creating tables and all those stuff requires

support, and I think one resource is required. The person should preferably be an administrator, and he should be aware of the database, repository file system, networking, and all such stuff.

I have been using Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional for ten years. I am an end-user of the solution. I am using Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional Version 12.55, and sometimes for some projects, we use Micro Focus LoadRunner Enterprise 2022.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Scalability is good. I can generate the number of user loads while adding a number of cloud instances and execute them anytime. I didn't see any issues with the tool while trying to scale at a large level.

Around 10 to 15 performance engineers are using the solution in my company. Also, the solution is used daily, and I mostly use it in the client environment.

So, it's currently used at its maximum rate.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high-quality technical support, I rate the support a one.

Negative

Previously, we were using HP. Though the tool's functionalities remain the same, its ownership keeps getting changed. We go with multiple open-source solutions like JMeter and all.

I rate the initial setup a seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. Considering my impressions of the product, I understand that it is a commercial tool, and it is very stable and of good quality. In general, it is very good. But, there are multiple factors where we can reject it because of its cost, support, and considering that anything that is very new can be done in the open-source tool. So rather than this particular thing, we need Micro Focus to put in extra effort. So, green screen applications are not supported by the solution. Also, ActiveMQ won't be supported in the solution. So for that, I need to write a custom code. I need to build different Java JAR files. Then, it doesn't support Java 64-bit, which is very poor. It supports only Java 32-bit version. For ActiveMQ and Kafka messaging queues, Java 64-bit is more dependable. So, that is completely redundant.

In the organization part, we have it deployed on-prem. But most of the tool licensing that we use is on the client side itself since the client purchases the tool, and so in their environment, we do the test.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is a high price, I rate the solution a five. So, many things can be done with open-source solutions rather than Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. But LoadRunner provides scalability and stability, which helps save the money of our customers.

If you have enough money, then you can go ahead with the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for enterprise performance modeling and validation of enterprise networks as well as tax applications.

The scripting or programming that you do to run within either the on-premises or cloud environments are the same. They take the same types of programs that allow you to run the performance modeling operations you need to run. 

There are various languages that they allow those programs to be written in, whether you want to use Java or something else.

On-premies, the step up for professional (in terms of models) is the enterprise version. However, in the cloud version, you almost have the enterprise right away. On-premises should be the same. However, since the cloud version has grown more in importance, they've expanded it without necessarily expanding the on-premises version. That is why we end up using both deployments.

They need to do some work within the very development environment. They need to have a better way of replaying what data is captured so it looks more like what the actual application is doing. By that, I mean that web technologies have increased pretty rapidly over the last two or three years. They have something called a runtime viewer that you do use when you're debugging your scripts. And in addition to all the other logging that they have, which is very expensive.

There's a reporting part of the cloud that could be improved a little bit. I've been more used to using the analysis program that's on the on-premise software, whether it's LoadRunner Enterprise or LoadRunner Professional. They have three major components of the whole software package is the analysis engine that looks at the data collected by the load test, and that generates a variety of different reports. They do that on the cloud as well. However, I don't know if it's as detailed; however, we maybe do not have much control as to what you want to get.

I've used the solution for over ten years. 

Technical support isn't the best. It depends on who you get. Every company has different levels of technical support. They have level one, level two, level three, and then the AR and D after that. If you're dealing with a simple question, maybe the level one or level two folks can handle it. However, if you have something that's really technical, you need to get to level three, and sometimes it takes a little more of a push to get that type of case elevated to the right person.

They have customer success managers or customer engagement managers that help customers do that - if you are paying for that level of support. It is the staff that can help move things along where improvement is needed. 

This is not an open-source product. You do have to pay for the solution. However, there are open-source solutions available. 

The cloud is probably competitive in terms of pricing. However, if you're talking about the on-premise stuff, the professional licenses or the enterprise licenses are on the high side of prices. They're not they're not cheap.

The biggest thing about the cloud, and, for that matter, whatever application you're talking about, is that they take care of the headache of you maintaining the infrastructure needed to support your performance testing environment.

I've been with LoadRunner long enough to know what it's like to maintain one of those types of environments since the cloud wasn't around ten years ago. Therefore, I've witnessed that the cloud offers significant savings in time and effort from a customer's point of view, even if you pay for it.

That said, they don't give it away for free. You have everyone that's doing all the maintenance for you, including setting up your servers and making sure they use to start up the servers appropriately with the right level of software and keep the software up to date and all that stuff. That costs, and that's not free. There's a careful balancing act you have to have between how much you're going to use the cloud, and what you're gonna do on-premise.

We're customers and end-users.

We have both the professional version as well as the cloud version.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

In terms of the cloud version, it definitely takes care of the issue of maintaining all the servers for you, ramping them up consistently. There are very few outages as far as that goes.

The solution is a performance-assessing tool. It supports a myriad of protocols. That is a big advantage of LoadRunner.

LoadRunner has helped in projects where we needed to use different protocols. It's also for clients who had already bought LoadRunner before and wanted to make use of it. 

It works on Citrix and desktop applications. There are a lot of protocols that LoadRunner will be able to handle. It is a great tool in that sense since it has a wide range of options.

The autocorrelation feature is quite helpful. With it, we can dynamically handle new sessions or non-new variables. 

It is a good and stable tool. 

The licensing is not cheap. However, it the client has specific requirements LoadRunner, will likely meet their application expectations very well.

The organizational aspects could be better.  

There should be more integration with more open-source platforms. It would be great if it could integrate with GitLab, for example. 

More features could be added to make it more robust. 

I've used the solution for around four years. I've used the solution on various projects.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. It gets good support from Micro Focus teams. I'd rate the stability 8.5 to nine out of ten in terms of reliability. 

It's a highly scalable tool. There are processes that can be added and can scale vertically and horizontally. 

It's a fairly straightforward setup. I'd rate it seven out of ten. It's a plug-and-play tool. There is a bit of a learner curve, however. You could also do some workarounds if you need to, however, that might make it more complex to set up. 

ROI is on a case-by-case basis. Likely there would be an ROI if an organization is heavily into LoadRunner. For example, if they had 100,000 or 200,000 users accessing the application at once where peak performance would be important.  

There's an Enterprise Professional and Cloud option as well. The cloud option is maybe called StormRunner. However, most clients choose on-premises deployments. I use the professional version.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten as it is more expensive. 

There is a free trial for up to 50 users that companies should try.

I'm a consultant. 

I've used LoadRunner XP versions and the latest LoadRunner, the 2021 R1 version.

I would advise new users to start with the professional versions. Then, if you have a requirement for an Enterprise version, you can go ahead and go to the Enterprise version. There is a free trial for 50 users. It's a good idea to take advantage of that. That way, you can try it out and see if LoadRunner's the better tool for you, for your organization, and you can look at pricing to see if it is a good match. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

My customers use it for performance testing. It is the ultimate tool for it.

It has features for recording. The best feature with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is that there is very little bottleneck or overhead issues. With LoadRunner, you can spawn 2000 contributions for one machine.

The pricing model, selling model, and business model need to be adjusted. For non-enterprise organizations, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is too expensive and not worth the cost.

Technical support also needs to be improved.

Everyone wants to make the testing phase easy, and so, the recording feature needs to be more stable for every app and every command application. Right now, the call language is C, and it would be better if it were changed to another language such as JavaScript.

I've been using this solution for almost 20 years.

It's stable, but in the newest version, it takes about six months till we can guarantee the stability.

My customers have turned to Micro Focus' technical support, but they have mostly not been able to solve the problems. When the case has to do with the setup, the technical support has been useless. So, I would give them a three out of ten.

Negative

I have used several tools, but Micro Focus is the best. We can get things done in a very short period of time. If we used an open source tool, then we would need more time.

The initial deployment is quite simple. It's not complex and can be done in one or two days.

LoadRunner Professional is easy to maintain.

The licensing model is complex. You have to pick up the protocol and the number of concurrent users, and then select the level of concurrent users. For example, there would be one price for 100 to 500 users and another for 500 to 2000 users. If you choose two protocols, then you will have to pay twice the amount depending on the number of concurrent users.

I recommend LoadRunner to everyone because they have a community with 50 concurrent users. Micro Focus has done standard testing and guarantees the use of LoadRunner in this case. With an open source tool, however, there is no guarantee, and you would be using it at your own risk.

The purpose of using a tool like this is to reduce application performance risk. So, using a tool at your own risk to reduce the risk is not reasonable. Therefore, I recommend using LoadRunner and rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

I primarily use LoadRunner Professional to load test applications in a manufacturing environment. 

LoadRunner Professional allowed us to load test potential new payroll solutions that would be implemented throughout the entire organization so that we knew which was best suited to performing well under pressure. 

LoadRunner Professional's most valuable features are the easy setup, the auto-correlation feature, the high number of protocols, the analysis, and the reporting.

Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both. LoadRunner Professional does have a mobile protocol, but it works on very few applications. Merging the two products would be a big improvement, especially if Micro Focus also ensures the on-prem and cloud solutions have the same features. They're also not great with communication, including about important things like new rollouts. 

I've been using LoadRunner Professional for five to six years.

LoadRunner Professional's performance has been good, and we've had no issues with stability.

LoadRunner Professional's technical support is really good - they respond promptly and give super support. They also have a nice, robust knowledge bank, so if there are any issues, you can usually find help on the support site or via the community.

The ease of LoadRunner Professional's setup process is one of its strengths - it's straightforward and takes a day or two to deploy.

We used a vendor team.

We've got quite a good ROI from LoadRunner Professional, as it has reduced our downtime, raised our response time, and allowed us to test the new payroll system for the entire organization. However, the ROI is lower than it could be as we only use LoadRunner sparingly to avoid higher costs.

LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition. The Community Edition is free but limited to fifty users; after that, you have to pay for extra users.

I would recommend LoadRunner Professional as a helpful, user-friendly tool with a huge knowledge base. The only thing to bear in mind is the higher cost. I would give LoadRunner Professional a rating of eight out of ten.

Our primary use case was for performance testing and platform application problems. We used it mainly in the banking sector and for API testing. It's multi-purpose. I recently moved to a different company.

This is a very comprehensive tool. It helped us with performance testing and allowed us to capture the actual performance engineering as well. 

If they were to add some kind of specific level monitoring, I think that would be very useful. When it comes to the main load of operation, it stimulates the load by using the underlying mechanism, either the API or some other protocol. If they were able to capture the UI aspect as well, that would be very, very helpful. This is an expensive solution and perhaps they could change their modeling to improve that.

I used this solution for over 12 years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The solution is scalable. The whole objective of LoadRunner is scalability. In the organization, we had somewhere around 20 users supporting multiple customers. 

The technical support is very good. 

Positive

I also have experience with JMeter. In comparison, if it's a wave application or to some degree API testing, then JMeter works well and it's a free tool so we can tweak it to our needs. We can use BlazeMeter for the same purpose. They are cheaper options than LoadRunner. But when it comes to different types of protocols, unique protocols, those are typically supported by LoadRunner. It's a very comprehensive tool and that's why it's costly.

The initial setup is not that straightforward. It requires specialists to train LoadRunner users. We used integrators to assist with implementation. The solution doesn't really require any maintenance. 

Micro Focus offers several options for licensing, it really depends on the number of users you have and your use case. 

It's important to have proper parameterization and correlation as part of the scripting. The workflow or modeling has to be done appropriately according to the load that will be required and that needs to be done prior to implementation. Know what your steps will be, how you plan to increase the load and replicate real-world scenarios.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.