Getting Application Insights counters with Cloud-based Load Testing

Cloud-based Load Testing with Visual Studio Online helps to identify the application performance issues under a certain user load. You can configure the load test with Application Insights counters in addition to the load test counters. This will enable you to compare and contrast both load test counters and server counters and figure out the performance issues more intuitively.

 This blog will tell how to enable the collection of Application Insights counters along with the Load Test counters while doing load test run using CLT.

1. Enable application insights for your service or application if not already done.
2. Enable Azure Active Directory for your Visual Studio Online (VSO) account as explained here if not already done.
3. Link the VSO Account with your Azure subscription as said here if not already done.
4. Sign in to you VSO Account. This is to refresh the Azure Resources Manager access token. The
   Azure Resource Manager access token in valid for 12 hours in the context of the
   VSO.
   1. If you have already signed in then make sure you sign out and sign in again.
5. Configure Application Insights counters in load test
1. Go to: RunSettings -> Get Performance Data from Application Insights
   
6. Select the desired application insights counters and click "OK" in the below dialog box. The counters shown here are the one shown in the metric explorer of application insights.
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7. Once the above steps are done, you will be able to see the selected counters under the "Applications" node as shown below
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8. Queue the load test run and while the run is in progress you will be able to see the application insights counters on the "Application" tab as shown below
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9. The application insights counter samples have "One minute" as the sampling rate irrespective of your load test counter's sampling rate configured. 

FAQ:

 1.       Will the old Visual Studio Online version of Application Insights work with Load testing with Visual studio Online?

Yes, you can still get the old Visual Studio Online version of Application Insights counter in the load test run as shown here.