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How to: Create Counter Sets in the New Load Test Wizard

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Counter sets are a set of system performance counters that are useful to monitor during a load test. Counter sets are organized by technology, for example, ASP.NET or SQL counter sets.

Counter sets, like run settings, apply to all the scenarios in a load test instead of individual scenarios. In other words, counter sets apply to an entire load test and should reflect the goals of your entire load test.

Counter sets are gathered on computers that you specify. The association between a counter set and a computer that is used during a load test is a counter set map. For example, the Web server that you are testing might have ASP.NET, IIS, and .NET application counter set mappings. For more information, see Specifying the Counter Sets for Computers in a Load Test.

Note

If your load tests are distributed across remote machines, controller and agent counters are mapped to the controller and agent counter sets. For more information on using remote machines in your load test, see Distributing Load Tests Across Multiple Test Machines Using Test Controllers and Test Agents.

Specifying Counter Sets in the New Load Test Wizard

When you create a load test, you add counter sets to the machines that you want to monitor in the New Load Test Wizard. For more information, see How to: Create a New Load Test Using the New Load Test Wizard.

To specify counter sets in the New Load Test Wizard

  1. On the Counter Sets page of the New Load Test Wizard, you will see the existing counter sets in the Preview selections pane. There will already be default entries visible, including the LoadTest counter set; the LoadTest counter set is collected by the controller by default. If you have agents installed, you will also see the Agent counter set under Agent Computers.

  2. (Optional) Click Add Computer to add a new computer to monitor. You will be prompted for a name. Type the name of a computer, and you will see nodes below the new entry that you can select. For example ASP.NET, IIS, SQL, and others. Select the check boxes in front of the nodes you want to select. The new counters appear in the Preview selections pane.

  3. For Computer Tags, type a tag to associate with the compute, for example, "TestMachine12 in lab3". Computer tags let you identify a computer with an easy-to-recognize name. The tags are displayed in the Counter Set Mappings node in the tree in the Load Test Editor. More important, the tags are displayed in Excel reports, which help stakeholders identify what role the computer has in the load test. For example, "Web Server1 in lab2" or "SQL Server2 in Phoenix office". For more information, see Reporting Load Tests Results for Test Comparisons or Trend Analysis.

    After you choose the counter sets, click Next to continue to the Run Settings page of the New Load Test Wizard. For more information, see How to: Create Run Settings in the New Load Test Wizard.

Later, you can edit the computers and counter sets by using the Load Test Editor. For more information, see Specifying the Counter Sets for Computers in a Load Test.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create a New Load Test Using the New Load Test Wizard

Other Resources

Creating Load Tests Using the New Load Test Wizard

Load Test Walkthroughs