In VSTS 2010 Beta 1 (available for download here ), there are four new properties on each Scenario in a Load Test that give you more control of the time, location, and duration of the running of the Scenario during the load test. You can access the Scenario...

VSTS 2010 Load Tests offer several new options that can be set on each Scenario in the load test that give you more control over the execution of the Scenarios within the load test and therefore allows you to more easily create a load test that accurately...

Now that VSTS 2010 beta 1 is available I and other Load Test development and test team members will be writing a series of blog posts highlighting the new Web and Load testing features. Ed Glas has a blog post that lists the new features here . You can...

This post describes how the user load is adjusted when a load test scenario uses a goal based load pattern. First of all, if there is a warm-up period specified, the goal based pattern does not apply during the warmup period. Instead, the load test...

There is now a hot fix available at http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=15510 for the bug introduced in VSTS 2008 SP1 where think times were being ignored during a load test for Web test requests that resulted...

If you want to collect performance counters from a SQL Server instance while running a load test, you can do this easily by selecting checking the SQL counter set in the "Manager Counter Sets" dialog in the VSTS load test editor. Doing this includes the...

I've posted a new article on diagnosing problems running out of memory while running a VSTS load test: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/diagnosing-outofmemoryexceptions-that-occur-when-running-load-tests.aspx .

Unfortunately, late last week we discovered a nasty bug with load testing in VSTS 2008 SP1 that is a regression from the original RTM version of VSTS 2008: for Web test requests that result in redirects, any think time that is specifed on the request...

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the beta version of VSTS 2008 SP1 is now available. In order to implementation the Load Test API enhancements (described here: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/load-test-api-enhancements-in-vsts-2008-sp1-beta.aspx...

In a previous blog post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/archive/2007/01/22/simulation-of-browser-caching-in-vsts-load-tests-and-web-tests.aspx , I described the behavior of caching with VSTS 2005. With VSTS 2008, t he default caching behavior is...

This is my first blog post of a personal nature. I heard on TV this morning that today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy ( http://www.robertfkennedy.net/ ). Today though I'm remembering another great American who died...

The beta for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available and includes enhancements to both the Web test and load test APIs that are described in these articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/web-test-api-enhancements-available-in-vsts-2008-sp1-beta...

I've posted an article on "Moving VSTS 2005 Load Test results from one computer to another": http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/moving-vsts-2005-load-test-results-from-one-computer-to-another.aspx

I've posted an article on "Adding Console Output to Load Tests running Unit Tests": http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/adding-console-output-to-load-tests-running-unit-tests.aspx .

Ed Glas has posted a "Content Index for Web and Load Tests" on his blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/edglas/pages/content-index-for-web-tests-and-load-tests.aspx . This provides links to a variety of online resources (forums, blogs, whitepapers) for VSTS...

I've posted an article on "Troubleshooting the VSTS Load Testing IP Switching Feature": http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/troubleshooting-the-vsts-load-testing-ip-switching-feature.aspx . Bill

For anyone have trouble getting the VSTS Web test recorder to start recording properly, see Mike Taute's blog post on diagnosing and fixing these problems at: http://blogs.msdn.com/mtaute/archive/2007/11/09/diagnosing-and-fixing-web-test-recorder-bar...

I've posted an article that describes how Load Tests that contains Unit Tests work in VS 2008: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/pages/features-and-behavior-of-load-tests-containing-unit-tests-in-vsts-2008.aspx Bill

By default, the Visual Studio Team Test Controller listens on TCP/IP port number 6910. If for any reason you need to configure the controller to use a different port, here are the steps to configure a non-default port: 1. On the controller, edit QTController...

Here is a summary of just a few of the enhancements to Web testing and load testing coming in the Orcas release of Visual Studio Team System (other team members will be blogging about other enhancements): The Web Test recorder now records AJAX requests...

If you are using Coded web tests (or Web test plug-ins with a declarative Web test) and running the Web test in a load test, you should avoid doing anything in your code that will cause the running thread to block for a long time such as reading from...

In a VSTS load test that contains Web tests, the load test attempts to simulate the caching behavior of the browser. Here are some notes on how that is done: · There is a property named on each request in a Web test named “Cache Control” in the...

I've posted an article with an example load test plug-in that allows you to specify the maximum number of test iterations for a load test: http://blogs.msdn.com/billbar/articles/533216.aspx

If you're interested in accessing the data in the load test results store directly to build your own custom reports or perform your own processing of the data, I've posted an article that describes the contents of each of the tables in the load test results...

Load testers sometimes need to clean up old load test results from the VSTS load test results store. The following SQL script deletes all load test results older than two weeks (though the timeframe is easily changed). If you have a lot of results...