Live Load Engines

The Live Load Engine is a special version of our Load Engine software pre-packaged on a Linux-based bootable CD. It can be downloaded in ISO format from our website and then written to a CD. Any x86-based computer can then be booted from the CD and it will automatically run the Load Engine without installing anything on the host computer. The hard drive in the computer is never used.

What are the advantages of this approach?

There is no installed footprint on the machine
The load engine is automatically configured to use all the memory available on the machine

This feature is especially useful when:

There are no PCs available that you have authorization to install software on
A large number of PCs is required for a large test, but not enough can be obtained on schedule or within budget

How to use

In most cases, the only steps required are:

Insert the CD
Power on the computer
Wait for the engine to appear in the Engines View of Load Tester
Select the engine and press the "Update" button (if needed)

The engine will start with the default options - use all available memory and use DHCP to obtain a network address.

Manual configuration

When the manual configuration option is selected, the following items may be customized:

Network Interfaces - the detected network interfaces may be enabled and disabled using
IP Addresses - Set the IP address, instead of getting the address via DHCP
DNS Settings - Set the DNS servers manually, instead of getting the settings via DHCP
Hostname - Assign a hostname to the engine rather than using the automatically generated name
Engine Memory size - Assign the engine memory size instead of using the maximum available memory. This should be used when dynamic file uploads are used in a load test - because this will consume memory outside of the engine and is this information is not available when the maximum available memory is calculated at boot time.

These configurations are performed using either command-line prompts or text-mode GUI. Several of the configuration tools are standard Linux tools that use a combination of arrow keys, space and enter keys for navigation and selection. If you need help using these options, please use the Support Request Form.