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Dan_Kriz's avatar
Dan_Kriz
Occasional Contributor
14 years ago

Hardware Requirements for Master PC - Distributed Testing

Hello All,


             I'm creating a ProjectSuite for a distributed testing scenario, with the following properties:


-This project suite will be pushed onto 40 remote PCs


-40 simultaneous instances of this Suite will be kicked off during the test runs


-Sync points will be used to perform stress testing on a server (certain actions will be required to be as simultaneous as possible on all 40 instances)


The 40 remote instances will be handled by TestExecute, most likely running off of virtual machines on a remote server. The Master PC assigning the jobs within the NetworkSuite to the remote PCs will be a physical machine.


What would the hardware requirements be for such a task? At what point would we see performance loss (for instance, If I were to ask all 40 remote machines to 'Click OK' at a certain point, would I notice considerable lag if the hardware for the Master was at this level etc.) What would the recommended hardware be for this task if this differs from a non distributed test?


I welcome advice from both AQA support as well as testers not officially associated with SmartBear. Cheers,



Dan

3 Replies

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  • Dan_Kriz's avatar
    Dan_Kriz
    Occasional Contributor
    14 years ago
    As an addendum, what port does TestComplete use to communicate with TestExecute? (If I were to have a firewall enabled, what port do I need to allow TestComplete/TestExecute to use?)
  • AlexKaras's avatar
    AlexKaras
    Champion Level 3
    14 years ago
    Hi Dan,



    Unfortunately, I'm doubting that somebody will be able to provide you with exact specification but you will have to experiment according to your actual configuration and requirements.

    One of the major points for your considerations should be your tested application. It is possible that test performance on the minimal h/w configuration (see requirements for TestExecute) will be acceptable if it is 'thin' web client running standalone on the test machine. But the C++/Delphi application of moderate size (~50MB) will require 1-1.5 GB of RAM. And I saw the .Net WPF application with very limited amount of actual business logic that was almost impossible to create tests for using TestComplete on Win7 64-bit machine with 2GB of RAM until the machine was upgraded to 4GB (but it is possible that tests execution under TestExecute might be good enough with 2 GB of RAM).

    Anyway, I think that required RAM for OS and TestExecute will be not less than 512MB.

    Also consider if the tested applications will run standalone or they will require some additional services (like DB servers, mail clients, different queues, etc.) to be executed on the same machines.

    I don't think that any server can handle 40 actively running virtual machines -- this is one more point to consider. The hardware components should correspond one to another (otherwise, for example, slow disks can degrade performance of the server with powerful CPU and a lot of quick RAM).



    Probably, you may try with whatever hardware you have at the moment, get initial experience with your application and your requirements and then try to estimate what and where in your test architecture should be upgraded.
  • Dan_Kriz's avatar
    Dan_Kriz
    Occasional Contributor
    14 years ago

    Thanks for the response Alex,


                               Running 40 VMs on one server being a bottleneck was something that I was already aware of, and is something that is being fixed in our design plans. While the Master PC is not necessarily a Thin Client, the application being tested is not run on that PC, it's run on a separate server, which leads me to believe that the hardware requirements will not be so demanding. We'll know once the initial test runs are being made. Thanks again,



    Dan