Testing Project Server 2007 background operations

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Topic Last Modified: 2010-01-19

This article discusses ways of testing operations that are not the direct result of any user action, but instead are running in the background as scheduled jobs. Some of the most frequent operations that belong to this category include the following:

  • Cube building

  • Active Directory synchronization

  • Project archiving

Normally, testing strategies for these operations merely consist of controlling when the operation under test starts. You run a dummy test on Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition at the same time in order to capture relevant data from the affected servers, without any other load. A dummy test has to be run in order to start the collection of performance counter data and continue for the whole duration of the cube building process. An example of a dummy test that can be used for the purpose is included in the "EPM Stress Test" Visual Studio solution (see the "DoNothing" class), which is part of the "Project Server 2007 Performance Lab Kit."

The following sections provide more specific details for testing each operation.

Cube building

Refer to Cube building process overview for more information about the cube building process in Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

In order to trigger a start of the cube building process, you can access the Cube Build Status page under Server Settings and use the “Build Now” button at the bottom of the page. This will cause activity on the server that is running Microsoft SQL Server, the Project Server application server, and the SQL Server Analysis Services server.

Active Directory synchronization

Refer to Manage Active Directory synchronization in Project Server 2007 for more information about the Active Directory synchronization processes in Office Project Server 2007.

The Active Directory synchronization feature in Office Project Server 2007 can synchronize resource data in the Enterprise Resource Pool or user data in security groups. Management settings for the two kinds of synchronization targets are different.

To configure and start a synchronization targeted to the Enterprise Resource Pool, you can access the Active Directory Enterprise Resource Pool Synchronization page from Server Settings. Then use the "Save and Synchronize now" button at the bottom of the page.

To configure and start a synchronization targeted to a security group, you must have two steps. First, you must set the Active Directory group for every Project Server group that you want to synchronize. You can do this by accessing the Manage Groups page from Server Settings. Click a group name to enter the Add or Edit Group page, and then click Find Group in the Active Directory Group to Synchronize section. The second step consists in configuring the synchronization parameters and scheduling. You can do this by clicking the Active Directory Sync Options button in the toolbar of the Manage Groups page: a dialog window opens. This allows you to set the options for group synchronization. You can use the Save and Synchronize now button at the bottom of this dialog window to start the synchronization task immediately.

Project archiving

Refer to the Retire projects article for more information about project archiving in Office Project Server 2007.

Project archiving (or backup) can be triggered by accessing the Administrative Backup page from Server Settings. (Select Projects and then click Backup.) Entities other than projects can also be archived and tested. The backup operation is enqueued and then processed by a Project Server application server. You can also expect significant activity on the computer that is running SQL Server.

Identify different queue behavior

As described earlier, you should understand and be able to identify different queue behavior during your tests. The two key performance counters that should be monitored for this objective are as follows:

  1. QueueGeneral / Current Unprocessed Jobs (Current number of unprocessed jobs in the queue)

  2. QueueJobs / Jobs Processed per Minute (Number of jobs processed per minute)

See Also

Concepts

Planning a Project Server 2007 test lab
Key metrics for Project Server 2007 performance
Setting up a Project Server 2007 test environment
Testing user-initiated read-only operations involving Project Web Access
Testing user-initiated writer operations involving Project Web Access
Testing user-initiated operations involving Project Professional
Extracting and analyzing lab test data