User-Friendly Server Monitor Licensing in 4.2
At Web Performance we offer software licenses for two products: Web Performance Load Tester (also known as the “controller”) and the Web Performance Advanced Server Analysis module (also known as the “server monitor”). The controller is a user-friendly tool to create and execute load test scripts, while the server monitor is a headless tool that gathers diagnostic information about potentially problematic servers. Working together, these tools can quickly and efficiently identify specific problem areas.
Our belief is that software licensing should be as quick and painless as possible, which is why we designed the controller to automatically distribute licenses to all of the systems involved in any given load test. Unfortunately, many of our security-conscious clients have found it unworkable to open their network security policy so that the controller and server monitors could communicate in real time. This reality has made software licensing cumbersome on the server side.
As a result, starting with Web Performance Load Tester 4.2, all licensing duties have been moved to the controller. Beginning with that release, you will be able to purchase a single license, for any number of virtual users and any number of server monitors, and import it exactly once on the controller. It will be possible to deploy the server monitor no matter how strict the network security policy, without any concern for the license status of each individual server.
If you do not wish to purchase licensing for the server monitor, you may still use the server monitors in “basic” mode, just as you could before this change. The demonstration version of Load Tester (which is free for anyone to download) will fully support advanced server monitoring for evaluation purposes.
In summary, you will still be able to use Load Tester to do everything you could do before, more easily.
Happy testing,
— Lane, Engineer at Web Performance