Case Study
FIU Chooses WebLOAD Over LoadRunner for Superior Performance
Overview
With 54,000 students, Florida International University (FIU)
is among the 10 largest public universities in the United
States.
The large student body is supported by extensive IT
operations using Oracle PeopleSoft as well as other
web and mobile applications that handle admissions,
graduation, payroll, financials, balance sheets, contracts and
grants
Challenge
The 65-member System Administration team at FIU is
constantly preparing systems for growth. “We need to
support the continuous expansion of the university and
test for bottlenecks at multiple points in the system – web
servers, application servers, and databases,” says Carlos
Varona, Director of Administrative Systems.
IT systems are constantly under development and load testing is essential during large system customizations or upgrades of PeopleSoft or the Oracle database. “The ability to stress the system and scale from 2k to 16k concurrent users, lets us identify where are issues and bottlenecks,” Varona adds. “Everything depends on how quickly a response returns to end users and with load testing we can analyze the performance behavior. In my eyes, if you neglect to load test your system, you are putting yourself at risk.”
FIU was a longtime LoadRunner customer and has seen it through the transition into HP Enterprise. “We’ve gradually experienced more complex pricing and less responsive support,” says Varona. “It got to the point where it simply wasn’t working for us.”
IT systems are constantly under development and load testing is essential during large system customizations or upgrades of PeopleSoft or the Oracle database. “The ability to stress the system and scale from 2k to 16k concurrent users, lets us identify where are issues and bottlenecks,” Varona adds. “Everything depends on how quickly a response returns to end users and with load testing we can analyze the performance behavior. In my eyes, if you neglect to load test your system, you are putting yourself at risk.”
FIU was a longtime LoadRunner customer and has seen it through the transition into HP Enterprise. “We’ve gradually experienced more complex pricing and less responsive support,” says Varona. “It got to the point where it simply wasn’t working for us.”
Solution
The FIU Administration group found WebLOAD and was
able to make a smooth and quick transition.
“We know LoadRunner well and have worked with it for
years. Yet we transitioned very quickly,” Varona notes.
“We started with the WebLOAD trial version and were able
to get the same functionality as we have today with the
licensed version. We set up scenarios and it was a painless
experience. As soon as we started with WebLOAD, we were
able to expand the number of concurrent virtual users in
the load testing.”
“the testing team has the same or more flexibility as with loadRunner, just with much better pricing and support”
Carlos Varona, Director of Administrative systems.
Carlos Varona, Director of Administrative systems.
Results
Today, FIU completely relies on WebLOAD for all its load
testing operations. According to Varona, “the testing team
has the same, or more flexibility as with LoadRunner, just
with much better pricing and support.”
Increasing the number of virtual users will help the testing
team expand its performance tests to cover a Tallahassee
disaster recovery environment, which runs similar systems.
“While you think you’re ok, if you don’t run load tests, you’ll never know how strong is your system and where are your weak links. For us this is critical, in case we need to switch over the disaster recovery system because of a hurricane.”
“While you think you’re ok, if you don’t run load tests, you’ll never know how strong is your system and where are your weak links. For us this is critical, in case we need to switch over the disaster recovery system because of a hurricane.”
Industry
Education
Business Type
Enterprise
Country
USA
