Typical deployment

The following diagram illustrates a typical deployment, showing the various IBM® Rational® Performance Test Server components and their locations.

About this task

The test sends a known quantity and rate of TIBCO EMS messages to an EMS server, records the reply times, and measures the impact on the receiving computer.

The messaging load requires two computers to send the messages, and agents are installed on each computer. A separate test computer is used to create, edit, and run the tests. An agent monitors the EMS server and probes capture server statistics.

The flow of EMS messages and test results are shown on the diagram. For the sake of clarity, some additional connections between the controller and agents have not been drawn. Each agent is started before any tests, and they each listen on an HTTP port for connections from the Performance Test Controller. These connections are used to send test configurations and to start/stop the tests.

The following sequence of events takes place from start to finish in the EMS messaging test that has been illustrated:

Procedure

  1. Agents (Rational® Integration Tester Agent) are started on all computers that will run tests or probes.
  2. The performance test is run by means of the GUI or a command prompt.
  3. The controller calculates the individual message rate to be used by the test engines, and the number of messages to send is split evenly between the available test engines.
  4. The test project data and configuration, including message rate, is sent to the remote agents by means of HTTP.
  5. Agents start their probes and test engines and report status back to the controller.
  6. When everything is ready the controller issues the start test command.
  7. The test engines and probes perform their tasks and store their results into the results database as they go along.
  8. The controller signals the agents to terminate the test, and the agents stop their respective test engines and probe processes. The agents remain running so that they are available for the next test.
  9. The controller quits the test and reports its status.
  10. The user can now extract the results from the database and plot some charts.