Setting up a Project Server 2007 test environment

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Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

Setting up the test environment

Required software and configuration

In addition to the servers composing the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 farm and the needed infrastructure services such as domain controllers, you should set up a Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition controller agent topology. For more information about Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition, see Controllers, Agents, and Rigs in the MSDN Library Online. We strongly recommend that you use dedicated hardware for the controller, the agent(s), and the database that stores test results, in order to minimize the effect on systems being tested.

Similarly, in order to test operations involving Project Professional, you set up a test infrastructure that can automate client operations across multiple Terminal Services sessions and control test scenarios in a centralized manner. An example of such a test solution is the community-based project named Test Framework, which is available at Project 2007 Test Framework.

Directly after the setup is finished in your test environment, we recommend that you perform a full backup. Save the backup set so that you will always be able to revert to the baseline state if it is necessary.

Data population

Once your Office Project Server 2007 farm is up and running, you can start to generate the data profiles that you planned for. One tool that you can use to help in this process is the community-based solution called EPM 2007 Test Data Population Tool, which is available at Project Server 2007 Test Data Population Tool.

After you complete the generation of one specific data profile, perform a full backup of the Project Server databases (and the SharePoint Server content database if you include Project Workspaces in your test scenarios). Then save the backup set so that it will be available for recovery every time that you need to start a test run with that data profile. It's important that every time that you start a new test run you perform a recovery of the backup set that contains the appropriate data profile. By doing this you can ensure the same initial conditions of multiple test runs for the same scenario.

Generating XML files supporting the load tests

Load tests must impersonate several different users in order to provide the most accurate simulation of reality. This can be achieved by using the data binding feature in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition so that every test instance will randomly select one user from the whole list. The same approach can be taken for binding other data to your coded tests, such as for example project names, resource UIDs, and so on.

The “EPMTestTools” Visual Studio solution, which is part of the “Project Server 2007 Performance Lab Kit” (see “Sample code” earlier in this section), provides a sample that can be used to enumerate all the resources from the Enterprise Resource Pool and to generate XML files that contains key information that will be made available to the tests.

See Also

Concepts

Planning a Project Server 2007 test lab
Key metrics for Project Server 2007 performance
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
Testing Project Server 2007 background operations
Extracting and analyzing lab test data