HPE LoadRunner Best Practices Series


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HPE LoadRunner Best Practices Series LoadRunner 12.50 Upgrade Best Practices

Document publication date: November 2015

Contents 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................. 3 Overview...................................................................................................................................... 3 Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 3 2. Preparation ................................................................................................................................. 3 Backup assets ............................................................................................................................. 3 Download relevant software ...................................................................................................... 3 Prepare the target machine ........................................................................................................ 3 3. Upgrade process ......................................................................................................................... 4 LoadRunner software upgrade procedure ................................................................................. 4 Upgrade the staging environment before the production environment ................................... 4 LoadRunner license upgrade procedure ..................................................................................... 5 LoadRunner upgrade – registry considerations ......................................................................... 5 LoadRunner assets upgrade procedure ..................................................................................... 5

1. Introduction Overview A major part of the product life cycle is the upgrade to the next release. Upgrade procedures are known to sometimes be a cause of failures, so in this document we present you with the best practices recommended by HPE R&D for a smooth upgrade of HPE LoadRunner.

Audience This document is intended for Performance Engineers who are responsible for maintaining and upgrading the various LoadRunner components. General upgrade information can be found in the LoadRunner Installation Guide.

2. Preparation Backup assets Before beginning the upgrade procedure, make sure all your assets are properly backed up; i.e. VuGen scripts, Controller scenarios, Analysis test results and generated reports.

Download relevant software Download the appropriate LoadRunner version from the HPE Software download site (or from your formal software provider).

Prepare the target machine 1. If you are upgrading from a LoadRunner version earlier than 11.00, you must manually uninstall the existing installation of LoadRunner before proceeding with the installation of the new version. 2. If you are upgrading from LoadRunner version 11.0x and above, there is no need to uninstall before you upgrade. The upgrade process uninstalls the previous version automatically, without need for manual intervention. Note: The above steps apply for all LoadRunner installations: LoadRunner Full setup, VuGen standalone, Load Generator standalone, etc.

3. Upgrade process Important: 



It is highly recommended that you perform the upgrade on all LoadRunnerrelated machines. LoadRunner does not support hybrid configurations; for example, where the Controller is one LoadRunner version and the Load Generator is a different version. As in any complex system upgrade, it is recommended that you first perform the upgrade on your staging environment, and after that on the production environment. See Upgrade the staging environment before the production environment for more information.

LoadRunner software upgrade procedure Assuming you are upgrading from version 11.5x to a newer release, perform the following:  

Run the setup.exe file (found in the installation folder). Choose the relevant installation from the setup window. Note: o

o o



The selected installation option must match what is already installed on the machine; this means, for example, that you cannot choose LoadRunner full setup on a machine that has a standalone load generator installation. If you want to change the setup on the machine, manually uninstall the existing installation before installing the new version. The upgrade procedure uninstalls the previous installation, so the whole upgrade takes more time than a regular clean installation.

Once the installation finishes successfully, close the setup window. Note: A reboot may be required if you also install Network Virtualization.

Upgrade the staging environment before the production environment After upgrading the staging environment, perform the following steps prior to upgrading your production environment:       

Open each module (VuGen, Controller, and Analysis) and verify a successful launch. Verify that you do not see any license errors. Record a short script in VuGen, using your most commonly used protocol. Replay once. Verify the replay was successful. Create and run a simple Controller scenario (1 script, 10 Vusers, 5 minute run). Verify you see monitors starting.

  

Verify successful completion of the scenario (i.e. no Controller crashes). Open results with Analysis. Verify default graphs are available and that they present coherent data.

Once these tests have been performed and have passed successfully, proceed with upgrading your production environment.

LoadRunner license upgrade procedure 





If you are upgrading from version 11.50 and above, then you do not need to upgrade or replace your license. The previous existing license will work with the new release. If you are upgrading from a release older than 11.50, then you will need a new license. To obtain this, you submit a ticket to the HPE Software Licensing Team, using the account you use to submit support tickets or access the KB database. For the ticket, you will need the active SAID (received with your support contract) associated with the product, and the host ID of the machine where LoadRunner is installed. You can obtain the active SAID and host ID from the following location on the machine, after the upgrade process has completed successfully: o For version 11.5x: Click Start > All Programs > LoadRunner > Configuration > LoadRunner License. o For version 12.0x: Open the LoadRunner License Utility. Note: If you need a new license, use the license portal to manage this request. The license portal can be accessed through this URL: http://h30580.www3.hp.com

LoadRunner upgrade – registry considerations To put it simply – there are no registry preparations to perform prior to an upgrade. The keys and values stored by one LoadRunner installation can be utilized by the one that replaces it. If you decide to uninstall LoadRunner completely (without upgrading), those values can stay in the registry, they won’t cause any harm to other applications.

LoadRunner assets upgrade procedure There is no need to manually upgrade existing VuGen scripts, Controller scenarios or Analysis files. Once you open them in the newly installed release, you can safely use them as before. Note: The above is relevant for “Record & Replay” scripts. If your scripts are dependent on the on-board compiler in LoadRunner (for example you have .h files which were compiled in version 11.0x and you have upgraded to version 12.0x) you will need to recompile these files in the new release to enable the script to work.