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 property sheet by right-clicking on the desired...

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 models the load that your are trying to simulate...

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 download the beta here . This post describes...

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 creates a temporary step load pattern that is...

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 in redirect responses (described in my earlier...

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 default counter set for SQL Server in your load...

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 .

We’ve had a number of users report OutOfMemoryExceptions occurring in the QTAgent process (or the VSTestHost process when running locally). There can be several different causes of the OutOfMemoryExceptions. This article attempts to help diagnose and prevent these problems. First a bit of background...

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 ) we moved some of the classes that are used to...

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 the same. However, with VSTS 2008, if you want completely...

The beta for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available. This article describes enhancements to the VSTS Load Test API for use by a LoadTestPlugin that have been added in this update. For complete details on changes and bugs fixes in this release, see Ed Glas's blog post at: http://blogs.msdn.com/edglas...

The beta for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available. This article describes enhancements to the VSTS Web test API that have been added in this update. For complete details on changes and bugs fixes in this release, see Ed Glas's blog post at: http://blogs.msdn.com/edglas/archive/2008/05/27/vs-2008-sp1...

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

In VSTS 2008, it is now possible to easily export load test results from one test environment and import them into a load test results database on another machine using the Load Test Run as described in this blog post by Sean Lumley: http://blogs.msdn.com/slumley/pages/managing-load-test-results.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 .

VSTS allows you to use the Console.WriteLine within unit tests, but the output is only valid when doing a single pass of the unit test. When running the unit test in a load test, there is no built in mechanism for outputting comments or data. The following routines will allow you to track custom messages...

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 web and load testing.

First some background on how IP Switching works with VSTS, which may differ from other load test tools you have used: Many other load testing tools that support IP Switching (also known as IP spoofing) require you to add the IP addresses to the network interface card (NIC) manually, and then the IP...

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-issues.aspx .

This article describes the behavior in VS 2008 for load tests that contain unit tests (VS 2005 was slightly different in some respects). Instances of unit test classes in a load test Each time an iteration of a unit test is run in a load test, a new instance of the unit test class is instantiated...