Hi there I'm currently trying to come up with a good way to use MS LoadGen in order to test out different hardware setups, and be able to compare them. The problem I have experienced in a couple limited tests so far was that the amount of actions/tasks completed was so incredibly different in between tests that it was completely unreliable to go on. Latencies were of course different as well. So, considering storage won't be a bottleneck, how do you guys think I could edit the configuration of LoadGen to get reliable results? Something I did so far: - Edit the number of tasks to only include BrowseCalendar, BrowseContacts, SendMail and ReadAndProcessMessages. The amount of actions are 10/10/60/20 in that order. Sub-actions are either 100% or 0%. I find that this makes it less random, but might not actually prove to be a good simulation of a real-world scenario. - Edit the amount of messages in the mailbox, and the kind of messages. I am currently using 100 messages I believe, all of type 10. This creates a mailbox only 205KB in size which I think is probably too low. I hadn't actually checked the size of this message before I chose it for my tests, will probably use a bigger size for future tests. The problem here, however, is that I am using ONLY type10. This means there is no randomness at all and again won't show a good real-world situation. - I am running stress mode, but should I? What if I didn't and based my facts purely on latency (as the amount of actions will be the same every time, right?) The problem in this case is that I need to determine a set number of users. What do I do when I want to compare an old CPU with a cutting edge one? That's the problem I have right now. One of our CPUs will be able to cope with 2000 users, whereas another might get destroyed entirely. How can we properly compare a CPU that can't handle 2000 users (but could handle say 1750 just fine) with one that can handle 2250 just fine? Latencies on the lesser one will probably skyrocket, while those on the better system will be "normal" as compared to other decent CPUs I take it? - I don't use any CPU intensive tasks currently such as anti-virus or other kinds of rules. Can you guys supply some of these that are often used? Going from software (antivirus) to rules and filters. If you can explain me how to implement these, however briefly, even better! Any tips or ideas you guys might have to compare setups? Good tips will be rewarded by a writeup of how I do my testing, but these results might not actually be published otherwise. Time will tell. Thanks in advance

I realize LoadGen might be pretty "exotic", so I hope you will forgive the occasional bumping that I will probably do to maybe get some input sooner or later ;) Thanks