Load Tester for 64-bit Windows on the horizon
We are well into the development schedule for the next release of Load Tester – version 4.2. There are a number of great new features on the way as well as some enhancements to our underlying architecture that will enable Load Tester to handle far more complicated testcases in future versions.
One of the features coming soon is a version of Load Tester for 64-bit Windows. Load Tester can run on 64-bit Windows, of course, but it currently runs as a 32-bit process and is subject to the same limitations as if it were running on 32-bit Windows. Testers working with very large testcases or tests with a large number of testcases have likely bumped into the limitations of Load Tester on the 32-bit Windows architecture, which limits Load Testers memory allocation to roughly 1.5G of RAM. The 64-bit version of Load Tester 4.2 (for Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008) will allow testers to make use of the full capabilities of modern hardware. Frank has been hard at work on the 64-bit conversion and several of us are now using 64-bit Load Tester on 64-bit Windows 7 on a daily basis.
We know many of you have been anxiously awaiting this improvement and we are looking forward to delivering it. However, there are currently a few limitations of the 64-bit version that we do not expect to remedy prior to release. Both of them are related to Internet Explorer. Many users of 64-bit Windows versions may not know that when they run IE, they are running 32-bit IE. While a 64-bit version is present and can be run manually, Microsoft does not allow the user to make 64-bit IE the default for the system. We speculate this is because many popular browser plug-ins, such as Flash and Acrobat Reader, are not yet available in 64-bit versions. Therefore, running 64-bit IE would remove these capabilities from the browser and render many websites and web applications non-functional.
Limitation #1: When Load Tester launches the browser for recording a testcase, Windows will launch the 64-bit IE because we are launching it from a 64-bit process. This means that applications making use of Flash or PDF files will not work during recording. Testers facing this problem can change an option in Load Tester to launch the 32-bit version, but this will bypass Load Testers more advanced IE integration and some cases may require manual browser configuration in order to record testcases.
Limitation #2: A similar situation applies to the HTML tab in the Content View, which embeds IE to render web pages in the testcase. Because Load Tester is a 64-bit process, it can only embed the 64-bit version of IE. This means websites with Flash or PDFs may not render as accurately in the Content View as they would in 32-bit Load Tester. There is no work-around for this issue, but it does not affect Load Tester’s ability to accurately replay a testcase or perform load tests. This is strictly a UI limitation.
In the short-term, we will continue to look for opportunities to improve Load Tester’s integration with IE. In the long term, as 64-bit versions of these plug-ins become available, these limitations of Load Tester will naturally subside.
Happy Testing!
Chris Merrill, Chief Engineer