Chapter 2: Getting Started Requirements Product Compatibility Installation Configure Browser Working With Files Requirements Hardware Requirements Simulating multiple virtual users/browsers hitting a web site is a CPU and memory intensive operation. The most common question is "what type of hardware do I need to test my web site?" The answer depends on the type of tests you will run, but the minimum requirements for a realistic simulation are: Minimum Hardware Requirements Virtual Users CPU MHz Memory MB 100 400 256 200 600 290 500 800 384   The number of virtual users a single computer can generate is currently limited to 500 virtual users. This was done to insure the accuracy of both the simulated users and the statistics. This limit is currently being re-evaluated with faster computers, and preliminary results show indicate that up to 1000 virtual users can be simulated on a single fast computer. Note that this new feature will be incorporated into a future release but no release date is currently available. Memory Requirements By default Web Performance Trainer uses 64MB of memory, so your computer should have at least this much available. Because statistics are gathered on a per-URL basis, playing back tests with larger numbers of URLs requires larger amounts of memory. More information about the performance of the load testing software is available. Operating Systems In order to run a load test you need at least two machines, one for running your web server, and another for running Web Performance TrainerTM. The operating system requirements listed below are for the machines running Web Performance TrainerTM only, which is independent of the web server and the operating system of the machine upon which the web server is running. Web Performance TrainerTM consists of two parts, a controller and a load generating engine, which by default are run together. In order to run the controller you need to have a graphical user interface installed, which means the Solaris and Linux computers must have X installed. The load generating engine can be broken out and run on a separate machine, which doesn't require a user interface, and thus can be run on headless servers. For more information please see the documentation for remote playback engines.   Operating System Version Windows XP   Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 or later) Windows 2000 SP2 or later Linux Tested on all versions of RedHat and Mandrake published since 2001. Solaris 2.7, 2.8, 2.9 or later. Several patches and font packages are required, although a fresh 2.8 or later install should include everything automatically.

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