Stress-testing ASP.NET/IIS with WCAT

Question

I'm trying to setup a stress/load test using the WCAT toolkit included in the IIS Resources.

Using LogParser, I've processed a UBR file with configuration. It looks something like this:

    [Configuration]
NumClientMachines:  1        # number of distinct client machines to use
NumClientThreads:     100     # number of threads per machine
AsynchronousWait:     TRUE     # asynchronous wait for think and delay
Duration:             5m      # length of experiment (m = minutes, s = seconds)
MaxRecvBuffer:        8192K      # suggested maximum received buffer
ThinkTime:            0s       # maximum think-time before next request
WarmupTime:           5s      # time to warm up before taking statistics
CooldownTime:         6s      # time to cool down at the end of the experiment 

[Performance]

[Script]
SET RequestHeader = "Accept: */*\r\n"
APP RequestHeader = "Accept-Language: en-us\r\n"
APP RequestHeader = "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)\r\n"
APP RequestHeader = "Host: %HOST%\r\n"

NEW TRANSACTION
    classId = 1
    NEW REQUEST HTTP
    ResponseStatusCode = 200
    Weight = 45117
    verb = "GET"
    URL = "http://Url1.com" 

NEW TRANSACTION
    classId = 3
    NEW REQUEST HTTP
    ResponseStatusCode = 200
    Weight = 13662
    verb = "GET"
    URL = "http://Url1.com/test.aspx" 

Does it look OK?

I execute the controller with this command: wcctl -z StressTest.ubr -a localhost

The Client(s) is executed like this: wcclient localhost

When the client is executed, I get this error: main client thread Connect Attempt 0 Failed. Error = 10061

Has anyone in this world ever used WCAT?

Answer 1

I don't have an answer for you, but have you considered using other tools for your testing? The WCAT tools seems pretty limited and complicated to use.

OpenSTA and JMeter are good open source tools for load/stress/performance testing.

Answer 2

OpenSTA and JMeter looks very Apache like. I'm running IIS on Windows Server 2003.

Answer 3

Have you looked at the Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool?

Answer 4

I'd look at updating to WCat 6.3 - available here for x86 and here for x64

They've changed the settings/scenario file strucutures, which is a little painful, but should suit your needs.

Answer 5

I've just started evaluating wcat 6.3 and I'm afraid my experience has been a bit disapointing in terms of online support/community.

There is also a major bug in the wcat.wsf script - see:

http://forums.iis.net/t/1153312.aspx

I'm now struggling with getting performance counter measurement working.

Answer 6

I've had good success with WCAT, though I'm struggling with simulating NTLM connections.

I'm using 6.3, so my config files look very different from yours. Some gotchas I noted along the way:
+ Make sure you've got your firewall turned off, or holes punched through for WMI.
+ Each thing you set in the request header has a tremendous impact on throughput. Apples to apples must have the same request headers.
+ Remote calls with multiple clients work only after correcting the bug identified by sthorogood.

Once I crossed those hurdles, I got great results from WCAT. It tests quickly, repeatably, and aggressively.

Best of luck,

Kevin

Answer 7

for performance counter you can define -p .prf in the same command run for controller as: wcctl -c config.txt -d distribution.txt -s script.txt -a localhost - p performance.prf